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STARS OF THE MORNING 
HOWARD KING WILLIAMS, D.D. 








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STARS OF THE 


MORNING m AOR \ Nee 


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BY) ee 


HOWARD KING'WILLIAMS, D.D. 





Spi . 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1926, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


STARS OF THE MORNING 
Levee 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


Our present blessings have their roots in the past. The dark- 
ness has been relieved by the shining of lives inspired of God. 

Knowledge of such lives gives us cause for gratitude and also 
points the way to more light. 

Living with these men, perchance we may become somewhat 
like them. 

George S. Innis says: We are to a certain extent the sum of 
our heroes, the combination of the men we have learned to 
admire and follow. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


httos://archive.org/details/starsofmorningOOwill 


PREFACE 


The title for this book was suggested to me 
first by the designation of John Huss as the 
“Morning Star of the Reformation.” I began 
thinking of those who had effectively inaugu- 
rated new movements upward, and this led to 
the selection I have made for these chapters. 

Other names might easily have been added, 
such as that of Florence Nightingale, who might 
be called the ‘Morning Star of the Red Cross”; 
but I wished to keep the series, first delivered 
as Sunday evening meditations, within reason- 
able limits. 

To call these men “Morning Stars” does not 
in any sense lessen the regard due to those men 
and women who have served, many of them con- 
spicuously, in ushering in a new day, but these 
I have selected seem to me to have had both the 
power and the opportune time to make effective 
their efforts toward reform. Dante, for exam- 
ple, came just at the beginning of the Renais- 
sance. On that crest he rose and at the same 
time made spiritually effective that movement 
by writing his great poem in popular language, 
—a new and daring thing to do. The spirit of 
the Renaissance made successful his daring in- 
novation, and his innovation made more effective 


the Renaissance. 
Vii 


Viil PREFACE 


So in the case of Wycliffe and each of these 
others—their special ability and courage, to- 
gether with the fulness of time, united to make 
effective their work. 

Many other brave souls wrought as earnestly, 
some perhaps as skilfully, but the times were not 
tipe to bring their sacrifices to fruition. So 
while many heroic souls fought and died for 
great principles without any apparent perma- 
nent results, these men in each case made ef- 
fective great movements upward, the benefits of 
which we are enjoying today in the ever unfold- 
ing and enlarging liberty now becoming the 
common heritage of us all. 

The chapter on “Jesus, the Day Star” is in 
this series not as one of these men, but as The 
One from whom these received their inspiration 
and power, and without whom none of these 
characters could have been. 


FOREWORD 


Sordid experiences constantly press upon us 
in daily life. To rest from these amid high 
ideals is refreshing to our tired spirits and bod- 
ies, and is necessary if we would not be alto- 
gether creatures of the physical. No means so 
unfailingly fruitful in surrounding one with 
these high thoughts have I ever found as in liv- 
ing with high-souled people. 

It has been my constant thought, in presenting 
this series of sketches, to give the facts of these 
lives, but also to maintain the atmosphere of 
their very person and times, that a tired person 
picking up the book might immediately be 
transported into another country and age, and 
verily live with Dante and Shakespeare and the 
others. 

To this end I have tried carefully to select 
the facts and to include here and there a story 
that would make these men real. 

With the fond hope that these characters may 
become your real, living friends, I send this 
book on its way. 


Philadelphia. 





CONTENTS 


Jesus 

DaNtTeE 
WYCLIFFE 
Huss 
SAVONAROLA 
WILLIAM THE SILENT 
SHAKESPEARE . 
Mitton 
WILLIAMS 
WESLEY 

CAREY 


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161 
185 


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THE DAY STAR 
JESUS 
YESTERDAY—TODAY—FOREVER 


“But Thee, but Thee, O sovereign Seer of time, 
But Thee, O poet’s Poet, Wisdom’s Tongue, 

But Thee, O man’s best Man, O love’s best Love, 
O perfect life in perfect labor writ, 

O all men’s Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest,— 
What if or yet, what mole, what flaw, what lapse, 
What least defect or shadow of defect, 

What rumor, rattled by an enemy, 

Of inference loose, what lack of grace 

Even in torture’s grasp, or sleep’s, or death’s,— 
Oh, what amiss may I forgive in Thee, 

Jesus, good Paragon, thou Crystal Christ?” 

Sidney Lanier. 


“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” 
—Matthew 3:17. 


“And we have the word of prophecy made more sure; 
whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp 
shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day- 
star arise in your hearts.” —Peter. 


JESUS 


WE had rattled along all day over the hills 
and valleys of Galilee on the rather doubtful 
roads made by travel in what the natives were 
pleased to call carriages,—affairs seating eight 
people including the driver and drawn by three 
horses abreast. As the day wore on to late after- 
noon, the horses trudged up a steep hill whose 
limestone ridge seemed to cut the deep blue of 
the sky; swished suddenly around a ledge and 
there lay a town in the cup-like hollow of the 
hills. “This is Nazareth,’ our driver volun- 
teered. Houses among olive and fig trees stag- 
gered from the bottom of the hollow irregularly 
up to the crest on every side. 

Here in a little house similar to these we were 
now seeing, some two thousand years ago, a 
young girl perhaps sixteen to eighteen years of 
age knelt in prayer. She was praying the 
prayer of every good woman of Israel in that 
ancient day,—that God might bless her in al- 
lowing her to be the mother of the long hoped 
for Messiah. The answer came: “Hail thou 
highly favored among women, the Lord is with 
thee. Thou shalt bring forth a child and thou 
shalt call his name Jesus. Of his kingdom there 
shall be no end.” 

Glad, yet anxious, Mary sought council of 

15 


16 STARS OF THE MORNING 


her cousin in Hebron, seventy-four miles away. 
It was a long journey for a young girl of that 
day, but it was worth it. She came back re- 
assured. ‘To Elizabeth also had come a proph- 
ecy proving her own. It helped in those diffi- 
cult months following, to know that Elizabeth 
at least knew the truth of her condition, even 
tho they looked askance at her in Nazareth. 
Then, too, Joseph to whom she was betrothed, 
trusted her altogether, and that was infinite 
comfort. No wonder when he must go to Beth- 
lehem to be enrolled according to Roman law, 
she chose to flee the gossip of the town, and go 
with him. So from this little town on which 
we are looking, they went to Bethlehem. 

For three days they traveled southward; she 
riding on a donkey, he walking by her side. At 
noon they would stop in some shady pomegran- 
ate grove and rest. So after three days, about 
midday, they passed the Joppa gate of Jeru- 
salem, and a little later the tomb, where Jacob 
tearfully buried Rachel in the long ago, and in 
the chill of evening they ascended a hill, and 
entered the gateway to the main street of Beth- 
lehem, the little crescent-town upon the hilltop. 
It was a busy place tonight for from all quar- 
ters these natives of the “City of David” had 
come at the command of Rome. The hospitality 
of the town was taxed to the limit, and no shel- 
ter could these travelers find save a part of the 
inn where the cattle slept. 

What story equals in poetic charm the record 


JESUS 17 


of that night! The watching shepherds! The 
soft light of heaven; the singing angels, and 
later by three months, perhaps, the picturesque 
journey of the wise men and their kingly gifts 
to the infant Jesus, so well portrayed by Dr. 
Henry Van Dyke in “The Other Wise Man”! 

Two years have passed. Old Herod who had 
tried to kill the possible rival to Judea’s throne 
is dead, and out from Egypt where they had 
sought refuge, Joseph and Mary come with the 
child, back again to Nazareth. 

What a childhood with such a mother in that 
land of flowers! ‘Those walks they took to- 
gether in the evening when the day’s work was 
done! How from his mother’s lips, he learned 
his first lessons of God’s care of the flowers of 
the field and the birds of the air, and with her 
recited the passages from the Old Testament, 
and so gained that knowledge of Scripture 
which later astonished those who heard him! 
A childhood, unknown to the world, save that 
he grew in stature and wisdom, and in favor 
with God and man. One flash of light in those 
years reveals him for a moment with the doctors 
in the temple. 

At length came sterner days. The father is 
dead. Jesus is running the business. They 
must now talk sometimes about making ends 
meet. Then one day Jesus tells his mother, that 
which in her heart she knew, and dreaded, that 
he must go away,—away from that quiet happy 
life, to do hard work,—His Father’s business. 


18 STARS OF THE MORNING 


“Tt’s got to be, and it’s goin’ to be! 
So at least I always try 
To kind o’ say in a patient way, 
Well, it’s got to be. Good-bye!” 


And now, at the age of thirty, he stands be- 
fore his austere cousin John for baptism. But 
John objects on the ground that he is not worthy 
to baptize Jesus. Jesus insists and there comes 
the divine approval when Jesus takes his place 
with men as the champion for God—a place 
challenged in a three-fold test by Satan, but 
made secure by the Master’s three-fold victory. 
From the wilderness Jesus came forth victor 
over sin. ‘‘Paradise lost in the garden; Paradise 
regained in the wilderness.” 

“Behold the lamb of God!’—these words 
were spoken by John beyond Jordan, as Jesus 
soon after his temptation walked one day along 
the street in Bethabara. The two disciples who 
heard John speak followed Jesus. One of them, 
Andrew, soon after brought his brother Peter; 
and John, his brother James. These four, John 
and James, Peter and Andrew, young men, vig- 
orous and fresh with youth and ambition, loved 
Jesus when they came in personal touch with 
Him. 


“O how you'll love Him, 
When you know Him!” 


What drew and held them? Some say his 
personal characteristics. No portrait was ever 


JESUS 19 


made of Him. All attempts to picture Him are 
mere guesses, yet that people loved Him for 
Himself—children, youth in life’s green spring, 
the learned, the poor—of this there is no doubt. 

Jesus purposed to return home with these new 
companions, and on the way they added to their 
number Philip of Bethsaida and Nathaniel of 
Cana. With these six young men he arrived in 
Nazareth to find his mother had gone to Cana, 
five miles farther on, to a wedding, and Jesus 
with his friends attend the wedding, where 
Jesus performed his first miracle. 

The public life of Jesus thus opened, contin- 
ued about three years and may be divided 
roughly into three parts, the year of obscurity, 
the year of growing popularity, the year of in- 
creasing opposition. 

Little record is made of that first year, except 
that most of it is spent in the south, in Judea. 
Here He upbraids the money changers in the 
temple; talks with Nicodemus about eternal 
life, and then starts northward through Sama- 
ria stopping at Jacob’s well and reaches at last 
His old home town, Nazareth. 

The second year is spent in the north with 
Capernaum as headquarters. Varied reports 
had come to Nazareth and “tas His custom was 
he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.” 
They asked Him to read and this is what He 
read from Isaiah 61: 11,—“The Spirit of the 
Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to 
preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me 


20 STARS OF THE MORNING 


to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliver- 
ance to the captives, and recovering of sight to 
the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 
to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” 
And they wondered, as He spoke, at the gracious 
words that proceeded out of his mouth; but 
some, it is always so, some hated him for his 
very goodness and tried to push him over the 
brow of the hill above the village. He passed 
through their midst unharmed and went to 
Capernaum, which became the centre of his 
Galilean ministry. This ministry may be epito- 
mized in these words of Mark:—‘*Now when 
the sun was setting, all they that had any sick 
with divers diseases brought them unto him; 
and he laid his hands on every one of them and 
healed them.” What a picture of that beauti- 
ful Sabbath evening ministry, symbolic of all 
Jesus’ life! 

His popularity so increased during this period 
of Galilean ministry that the crowd wanted to 
make Him King by force. To escape this un- 
desired kind of popularity, for the only popu- 
larity Jesus wants is to be king in the heart, 
Jesus took a few disciples and retired secretly 
to Decapolis, a region just south of Damascus. 
Yet even here, he could not be hid, and his gra- 
cious work continued. During this period, 
Peter responds to Jesus’ question as to who He 
is, in those immortal words—‘Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God.” What would 
your answer have been’? Also, on one of those 


JESUS om 


days, Jesus is transfigured before them, and 
from that time the shadow of the Cross falls 
across the pathway of Jesus, and the second year 
of his ministry draws to a close. 

The third year opens with Jesus again in the 
busy throngs of Judea and Perea. Under the 
shadow of the cross, He steadfastly continues 
his gracious ministry of words and works. Then 
comes the last week beginning Sunday with the 
triumphal entry into Jerusalem; Monday, the 
cleansing of the temple; Tuesday, a day of 
teaching in the temple; Wednesday, a day hid- 
den from our view; Thursday, the last Passover 
and the first Lord’s Supper; Friday, the six 
mock trials, three ecclesiastical and three civil; 
then the cross. 


“Droop, Sacred Head, 
Upon that breast divine, 
The strife is o’er, 
The victory is Thine. 
Hush, sounds of earth, 
Sink, sink thou mournful sun; 
On Calvary’s cross, 
Lo! mercy’s work is done. 
Gaze, mortal gaze, 
The Saviour hangs for thee, 
Silent in death, 
Upon the accursed tree. 
Love, holiest love, 
Shall earth and heaven atone, 
In fadeless day, 
From Christ’s eternal throne!” 


22 STARS OF THE MORNING 


Death had no power over Him. He is seen 
again, the same yet different; changed and not 
changed, with the body that shall be. So He 
leaves the disciples that He may be with us all, 
always, for as Drummond points out, had He 
remained in the body to this day, millions 
would crowd to see Him. The ocean liners 
would be filled, the trains and roads leading to 
Jerusalem congested, the streets hopelessly 
jammed with people who had traveled from far 
and near to catch a glimpse of the great Christ. 
But only a few of these could ever hope to see 
Him, and then only catch a fleeting glimpse, 
while millions, too poor to travel, could never 
hope to see Him. But now that He has gone, 
He has also come again, that the richest and the 
poorest might have Him always. 


‘Speak to Him then for He hears, 
And spirit with spirit can meet; 
Closer is He than breathing, 
And nearer than hands and feet.” 


Of the importance of the resurrection, Noah 
K. Davis writes,—‘‘Beginning with His birth at 
Bethlehem and ending with the apocalyptic rev- 
elation of Himself at Patmos, the arch of events 
has for its keystone, His resurrection from the 
dead, without which they fall away. Indeed 
without this, the total of Christianity would dis- 
appear, ‘for if Christ has not been raised our 
faith is vain.’ ” 


JESUS 23 


The extraordinary Christ! Extraordinary, in 
birth, in life, in present power! ‘Truly did 
Charles Lamb say in a company of savants,— 
“If Shakespeare should enter, we would all rise. 
If Jesus should enter, we would all kneel.” 

This Sun of the new day, the Day-Star, lights 
up the face of God and the path of man; sends 
its healing rays into sin and darkness, steals away 
the shadow of death, and rises in ever increas- 
ing splendor toward the day when He shall 
reign for ever and ever. 


“Our little systems have their day; 
They have their day and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of ‘Thee, 
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.” 


* * * 


Out on a hill overlooking the city of Damas- 
cus, a few of us stood one afternoon at the hour 
of three, the Mohammedan hour of prayer. 
From the graceful minaret of a near-by mosque, 
the Muezzin called all good Mohammedans to 
worship, with these words,— 


“Come to prayer! 
Come to peace! 
Come to progress! 


There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed 
is his prophet.” 


From the minaret of Heaven comes the call to 
every soul,— 


24, STARS OF THE MORNING 


“Come to prayer! 
Come to peace! 
Come to progress! 


There is no God but Jehovah, and Jesus is 
the Saviour.” 


THE MORNING STAR OF THE 
RENAISSANCE 


DANTE ALIGHIERI 
ITALY 
(1265-1321) 


“Heaven unbarred to him her lofty gates, 
To whom his country hers refused to ope.” 
Michelangelo. 


DANTE 


FIRENZE LA BELLA, the people of Tuscany 
call this charming Italian city.. Firenze means 
to bloom;—this is Florence, the flower of the 
Apennines in a valley of the olive groves, 
orchards and vineyards,—Florence the beauti- 
ful. | 

The history of the city of Florence goes back 
two centuries before Christ’s birth,—a glorious 
past, with an attractive present. Divided by the 
Arno, with fine churches and squares, attractive 
bridges, clean though narrow streets, the city of 
Florence is crowded with historic and literary 
memories. Here lived and worked such men as 
Latine the writer, Calvalcante the poet, Giotto, 
architect, sculptor and painter; Boccaccio, the 
father of the modern novel. Here, too, Savon- 
arola wielded such mighty influence, and in the 
public square was at last burned to death. As 
one stands on the Ponte Vecchia he can almost 
see the Apollo-like Tito of George Eliot’s crea- 
tion, leap into the engulfing arms of the Arno 
from the infuriated mob. 

In one of the high old houses bordering on 
the market square, lived Aldighiero Alighieri 
with his wife Bella. ‘To this home on a fine 
May morning in 126s a little son was given. 
They called him Durante, “he who endures.” 

27 


28 STARS OF THE MORNING 


Later they shortened the name to Dante, “the 
giver,” destined to be the giver of the greatest 
Italian poem and one of the greatest poems ever 
created. 

The life of Dante naturally divides into three 
periods. First. To the death of Beatrice in 
1290. Second. The Political Period (1290- 
1302)... Third. The Period of Bxilem(agas 
Peet). 

While Dante was yet a baby, his mother died, 
and his father’s time was much occupied with 
city affairs, so that the boy was left largely to 
his own devices. Fortunately he chose well. 
He acquired a good education and taught him- 
self the art of verse writing, a thing much in 
vogue in that day. 

Longfellow Says of this first period, “It was a 
quiet, peaceful youth, passed in the study of 
philosophy and music and painting and poetry; 
and in the companionship of learned men and 
artists.” 

At a little social gathering when he was not 
quite nine years old, Dante saw a little girl. 
She wore a red dress and her face was so inno- 
cently beautiful, her manner so gentle, that 
Dante says—‘‘She seemed not to be the daugh- 
ter of a mortal man, but of God.” Her name 
was Beatrice. (Pronounce it in the soft Italian 
accent Be-a-tre-sha). It was nine years later 
before he saw her again, yet she had remained 
fresh in his memory. This time she greeted 
him so graciously as he passed her on the street, 


DANTE 29 


that he says, “I seemed to see the heights of 
blessedness.” His love for her was entirely a 
spiritual and ideal affection, which continued 
in a sort of spiritual worship unmarked by jeal- 
ousy, even after she was married to another. 
While Dante was absent from Florence on a 
mission for his city, Beatrice died and with her 
death, the youth of Dante was ended. 

The second period opens with Dante twenty- 
five years of age, throwing himself into the pub- 
lic affairs of the city. He married one Gemma 
de Donati. Boccaccio exclaims of her, “O in- 
conceivable torture, to live and converse and 
grow old and die with such a jealous creature!” 
This however, may have been only his own opin- 
ion, though Dante leaves no record of his do- 
mestic affairs and in the period of his exile, his 
wife never joined him. 

It was an age of bitter feuds. The Ghibel- 
lines, supporting the Emperor of Germany, and 
the Guelfs, who were endeavoring to establish 
the temporal power of the pope and who later 
sub-divided into the Neri (blacks) and Bianchi 
(whites) left Florence inaturmoil. Dante, per- 
haps to submerge his grief at the death of Bea- 
trice, threw himself into the struggle, proved 
himself an able leader and was elected one of 
six Priors of the city. While absent on an er- 
rand for the city, his opponents ascended to 
power and Dante with others, was forbidden to 
return to Florence on pain of being burned 
alive. So closes the second period of Dante’s 


30 STARS OF THE MORNING 


life, “bereft of home and all his worldly goods.” 

The third period, extending over nineteen 
years, is one of wandering in exile. How deep 
the sorrow of. Dante can be measured only by 
the greatness of his love for his native city. He 
writes, ‘It pleased the citizens of the fairest and 
most renowned daughter of Rome, Florence, to 
cast me out of her sweet bosom, where I was 
born, and bred, and passed half of the life of 
man, and in which, with her good leave, I still 
desire with all my heart to repose my weary 
spirit and finish the days allotted tome. Truly 
I have been a vessel without sail and without 
rudder.” Yet when offered an opportunity of 
returning to Florence if he would confess he 
had done a wrong, he refused. So he wandered 
to Verona and Paris; some say even to Oxford; 
to Pisa and at last to Ravenna in 1313 where he 
continued to live until his death in 1321. He 
never saw Florence again. His remains were 
hidden until 1865, and though the city of Flor- 
ence would then gladly have his body buried 
there, Ravenna rightly retains it as a precious 
heritage. 

Of Dante’s appearance, Boccaccio says, “He 
was of middle height, stooping, becomingly 
dressed; face long; aquiline nose; large eyes; 
heavy jaw; dark, sad, courteous, civil.” 

On the wall of the Palace of the Podesta in 
Florence is a painting of Dante by Giotto exe- 
cuted about 1300. The place was later turned 
into a jail and the room on the wall of which 


DANTE a1 


the portrait was painted was used as a store- 
room, The walls were whitewashed and the 
precious picture was covered. In 1840, through 
the combined efforts of three men, an American, 
an Englishman, and an Italian, the painting was 
_ discovered and restored. ‘This is the only like- 
ness there is of Dante with the exception of a 
mask made at the time of Dante’s death in Ra- 
venna. Of him, Longfellow says,— 


“What should be said of him cannot be said; 
By too great splendor is his name attended; 
To blame is easier those who him offended 
Than reach the faintest glory round him shed.. 
This man descended to the doomed and dead 
For our instruction; and then to God 

ascended. 
Heaven opened wide to him its portals 
splendid.” 


The outstanding fact of Dante’s life is his great 
poem the “Divine Comedy.” He wrote other 
poems. He did other things; but this poem 
casts all other achievements of his life in ob- 
scure shadows. 

The name “Comedy” is used in the original 
meaning of that term,—a sad beginning, work- 
ing up to a happy ending. The term “Divine” 
was added by early lovers of the poem. The 
first seven cantos were written during the sec- 
ond period of Dante’s life, while in Florence, 
after his marriage. On his exile and the loss of 
all, Dante gave up hope of recovering the can- 


32 STARS OF THE MORNING 


tos along with the loss of other things. ‘They 
were discovered by a friend and sent to him 
with a request that he might finish the poem. 
Thirteen of the later cantos were placed by 
Dante in a secret closet in a wall in Ravenna and 
were not discovered until after his death. 

The Divine Comedy is divided into three 
parts—the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the 
Paradiso. 

The pictures are colored by fourteenth cen- 
tury thought; but eternal truths are couched 
therein. 

Dante began his poem at about the age of 
thirty-five so his Inferno opens— ; 


“Midway upon the journey of our life 
I found myself within a forest dark.” 


In the wood he is opposed by three animals— 
a wolf (cupidity), a lion (pride), a leopard 
(lust). Four sluggish rivers wind through the 
place, the rivers of sorrow, hate, fire, forgetful- 
ness. At last he comes to the entrance to Hell 
over whose portals he reads,— 

‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” 

Led by Virgil, the old Roman poet, so ideal- 
ized in Dante’s day as emblematic of science 
and philosophy, Dante finds himself in a great 
funnel-shaped place penetrating to the center of 
the earth. The cone grows smaller as he pro- 
ceeds through ever narrowing circles, nine of 


DANTE 33 


them. ist, the place of the heathen who knew 
not Christ; 2nd, those who lived only for pleas- 
ure; 3rd, gluttonous; 4th, avaricious; sth, the 
angry; 6th, heretics; 7th, murderers and flatter- 
ers; 8th, political and religious revolutionists; 
gth, Judas and traitors of all sorts, to the bottom 
of this last circle where a great giant, Satan, en- 
cased in ice ever struggles to be free—but ever 
freezes the more securely. A graphic, if gro- 
tesque, picture of the helplessness of sin! ‘Trem- 
bling, Dante is led by Virgil through a secret 
passage out to the bright world on the other 
side,— 

‘“Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars,” 
emerging as Easter Day is dawning. 

His journey now takes him through Purga- 
tory. Dante pictures Purgatory as an island 
thrown up when Satan was cast into the depth 
of the earth. It consists of seven broad terraces 
rising through: ist, Pride; 2nd, Envy; 3rd, 
Anger; 4th, Gloom and Indifference; sth, Av- 
arice; 6th, Gluttony; 7th, Incontinence; then to 
the summit, or Earthly Paradise—where is the 
Garden of Eden. For Dante teaches that man 
may gain Heaven only as he first recovers a per- 
fect earthly life. 

Farther Virgil, representative of moral phi- 
losophy, cannot go, and a strange thing happens, 
—a power drawing upward as naturally as grav- 
ity on earth draws downward, carried Dante 
into the presence of Beatrice, representative of 


34 STARS OF THE MORNING 


Divine Wisdom. Having drunk of a stream of 
purifying water she points out to him, he comes 
forth from Purgatory,— 

“Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars.” 
In Paradise, under the guidance and care of 
Beatrice, he mounts upward. A golden ladder 
rises into inexpressible light. He hears music 
so sweet, that much of it his senses cannot take 
in. Upward through nine heavens he passes, 
(1) the Moon, where dwell the satisfied; (2) 
Mercury, the place of the performers of great 
deeds; (3) Venus, where the great lovers are; 
(4) Sun, where dwells heavenly wisdom; (5) 
Mars, where are the crusaders and martyrs of 
the faith; (6) Jupiter, the place of lovers of 
righteousness; (7) Saturn, the repose of medi- 
tation and silence; (8) the fixed stars; then a 
golden ladder by which he climbs to (9) the 
Empyrean, the Heaven of light and love. 

Beatrice has disappeared, for even the finest 
human love is not enough to bring one to God, 
and St. Bernard guides him even to God Him- 
self, whom beholding, mortals at last find peace, 
in 

‘The love which moves the sun and the other 
stars.” 

Why call Dante the morning star of the 
Renaissance? He was not the day, but he her- 
alded the day, for he first dared to put in the 
vernacular of his people the loftiest thoughts. 
Hitherto Latin or Greek was the only garb con- 
sidered dignified enough for high thoughts. 


DANTE a0 


Indeed the first seven cantos of the Comedy were 
originally written in Latin. These, Dante later 
translated into ‘Tuscany, and wrote the rest of 
the poem in that language. Men were aston- 
ished that he should use the vulgar tongue. One 
monk says—‘It seemed a difficult, nay, incred- 
ible thing, that those most high conceptions 
could be expressed in common language, nor did 
it seem to me right that such a science should 
be clothed in such plebeian garments.’’ Dante 
answers,—‘‘When I recalled the condition of the 
present age, and saw the songs of the illustrious 
poets esteemed almost at naught, I threw aside 
the delicate lyre and attuned another more be- 
fitting the ear of moderns ;—for the food that 1s 
hard we hold in vain to the mouths of suck- 
lings.” 

Others followed him in the popularizing of 
high thoughts which cannot be accomplished in 
a language limited to the few. He dared trust 
lofty thoughts to lowly people in lowly lan- 
guage, and did thereby raise the people and the 
language, for Dante’s Italian is still the modern 
loved tongue after these six centuries, and his 
thoughts still influence our theological thinking. 

Who can tell the limit of his influence on 
Wycliffe, who put the Bible into the language 
of his people; on Huss, who preached in the 
common tongue, or on Luther who translated 
the Bible into German! 

The only hope of the re-birth of learning in 
any age, or of the effective presentation of great 


30 STARS OF THE MORNING 


thoughts is, that every man shall hear high truths 
in his own tongue. 

So Dante, denied the object of his love; a 
wanderer exiled from the city he loved beyond 
common love, resolutely wrote with “borrowed 
ink,” “toilfully climbing the steps of others,” 
that he might bring down from the very throne 
of God, majesty and light. 

He made plain that the path of sin leads to 
the helplessness of hell from which no moral 
philosophy can remove us, and that though love, 
even so pure a love as that for Beatrice, may 
lead us to Paradise, yet no power save the Chris- 
tian life typified in St. Bernard can at last bring 
us into the very presence of God, where alone 
the soul finds peace. 


‘There was none other good enough 
To pay the price of sin 
He only coujd unlock the gate of Heaven 
And let us in.” 


At the age of fifty-six this star of the renais- 
sance, having passed through his Inferno and 
Purgatorio on earth, ascended into the great 
empyrean. 

There he shines, the Morning Star of that 
longed-for day, when the “knowledge of the 
Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover 
the sea.” 


THE MORNING STAR OF THE 
OPEN BIBLE 


JOHN WYCLIFFE 
ENGLAND 


(1320-1384). 


“Tt was almost four hundred years after his death before 
men began to understand Wycliffe’s relation to English his- 
tory, and to do justice to the great-souled leader who sup- 
plied the philosophical and Scriptural basis for the refor- 
mation.” : 
George S. Innis. 


“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, 
And a light unto my path.” 
Psalm 119: 105. 


WYCLIFFE 


WE are told that the early Christians went 
everywhere preaching—whatP The word. 
Every Christian who would maintain the sim- 
plicity of Christianity must follow the same 
plan. Paul says, “I would rather speak five 
words with understanding than ten thousand in 
an unknown tongue.” The ascendency of the 
church to temporal power, made her leaders 
fearful lest the general reading of Scripture 
would reveal their own nefarious practices. So 
the Bible was obscured. In what we call the 
dark ages, only a few leaders in the Church had 
access to the Scriptures, and this only in Latin 
or Greek, and their use of Scripture was not to 
guide life, but to establish their prestige. Such 
was the condition at the beginning of the Ren- 
aissance. In this darkness a star arose in Eng- 
land in the person of John Wycliffe, heralding 
the day when the Bible should be accessible to 
all. 

The life of John Wycliffe (it is said that there 
are some fifty different ways of spelling his 
name) divides conveniently into three parts :— 
1, Early life; 2, Oxford years; 3, Lutterworth 
days. 

Records, in those days, were not accurately 

39 


40 STARS OF THE MORNING 


kept, if kept at all. The exact date of his birth 
is not known, but it was somewhere about 1320, 
near Richmond, Yorkshire, England. Just as 
the star of Dante was setting in Ravenna, Wy- 
cliffe’s arose in England. His father was a 
squire and of such station that John could be 
given opportunities for an education. We can 
imagine his religious life also, being nourished 
in these early days. At about the age of fifteen 
he went to Oxford. 

Oxford in Wycliffe’s day was a battlefield, as 
well asa university. Within the university were 
two factions, “nations’’ they called them, the 
North, ‘“Boreales,” breathing the independence 
of the hills, and the South, the ‘‘Australes,” sup- 
porting the papacy and established things. Wy- 
cliffe attended Baliol College and so took his 
place with the North, and in this militant at- 
mosphere, early learned to champion his views. 

Also in those good old times of which we 
hear so much, the town folk and the students 
were at constant war. Now and then a few were 
killed in the fray. Jews were not permitted to 
charge more than 43 per cent. for loans to stu- 
dents. Bare damp rooms were shared by three 
or four students, and in flickering uncertain 
light they studied, and lived on bread and beer. 

Oxford, always known as the centre of free- 
dom, aroused at one time the wrath of Henry 
III to such degree that he threatened to hang all 
the students for their views. Students of theol- 
ogy studied not the Bible as one would suppose, 


WYCLIFFE AI 


but such writers as Thomas Aquinas and Duns 
Scotus. 

In this atmosphere Wycliffe applied himself 
to study with energy, and after receiving his uni- 
versity degree, continued at Oxford working for 
higher degrees. He began teaching and before 
long his clear logic, broad knowledge and con- 
vincing manner gave him the reputation of 
being the most learned man in England. His 
class rooms were crowded. He was immensely 
popular with the students. 

In his study and teaching his own thoughts 
were Clarified. He brought Scripture to bear 
upon social, national, international, ecclesiasti- 
cal life. He held that Scripture is the basis for 
living in all relations of life. He saw the cor- 
ruption of ignorant priests about him, and yet 
their power over people because of their sup- 
posed miraculous gift of changing the bread and 
wine into the actual body of Christ in the 
eucharist. He searched the Scriptures and 
proved from them that transubstantiation was 
false. He saw vast sums go out of England to 
support a profligate pope who was then living 
in luxury in Avignon, France. He hurled the 
weight of his great learning and personality 
against these religious and national wrongs. 
The nation needed just such an advocate as he, 
so his Oxford days were shared during twelve 
years with national duties. He was summoned 
to London, where he wrote and spoke for Par- 
liament against Italian cardinals living on Eng- 


42 STARS OF THE MORNING 


lish money and farming out churches in Eng- 
land to corrupt adventurers who never saw 
their charges and never cared to see them, or 
even worse, using some of the money sent from 
England to pay French troops to fight England. 

‘Time cannot be given here to tell the inter- 
esting story of these London days. His appeal 
as at Oxford was always to Scripture. He was 
a troublesome doctor of divinity to the Roman 
church and there was no law then in England 
to burn heretics. He was brought to trial in St. 
Paul’s, London; a trial ending in a riot between 
those who opposed him and his champion, John 
of Gaunt. Pope Urban VI summoned him to 
appear before him, for the beneficent purpose 
of burning him, but Wycliffe wisely refused to 
accept the invitation. And his only crime was, 
that he tried to live according to the Bible and 
to persuade others to live that way. Surely his 
opponents were not Bible Christians. 

Five “bulls” were issued against him in 1377, 
but Wycliffe was too popular a man to be very 
much affected by a papal “bull.” However, 
under severe pressure, in 1383 he was finally 
oanished from Oxford as teacher. It was a bad 
thing for Oxford, for the students dropped to 
one-fifth their number. It was a good thing 
for coming generations, for students and schol- 
ars flocked to his little parish in Lutterworth, 
where Wycliffe now continued, uninterrupted, 
the work that had been so often shared with 
his manifold duties. He gave himself to the 


WYCLIFFE 43 


translation of the Bible in the English language 
and to the writing of tracts. These he placed 
in the hands of faithful men whom he instructed, 
and sent out to teach the Bible to the common 
people. These “Lollards’ as they were called 
were men of all degrees of learning and igno- 
rance, but they were sincere and earnest and 
like the early disciples “went everywhere 
preaching the word.” ‘They laid a strong foun- 
dation for the religious and political freedom 
of England. “We might date the beginning of 
religious and civil freedom with the proclama- 
tion of Wycliffe’s views of government and the 
establishing of them in the minds of the people 
by reading the Bible.” 

Those last days of Wycliffe’s are beautiful, 
with the story of his kindly pastoral care of 
the common people of Lutterworth, for he lived 
the things he taught. 

Not strong at any time, the prodigious la- 
bors and trials of Wycliffe were now telling 
upon him, and on December 31, 1384 as the old 
year died, Wycliffe ceased from his labors and 
his works do follow him. “A Happy New 
Year!” better yet, ““A Happy Eternity!” was his 
as he entered the Eternal City. 

His body was laid to rest in Lutterworth, hav- 
ing escaped the burning stake. But thirty years 
later in 1415, the council of Constance, which 
condemned John Huss to be burned, decreed 
that the remains of John Wycliffe should be 
disinterred and burned. It was not until twelve 


44. STARS OF THE MORNING 


years after, that Bishop Fleming with a great 
gathering of dignitaries, engaged in the interest- 
ing service to mankind of digging up the de- 
cayed remains of Wycliffe, buried there forty- 
two years before, and burning them; casting the 
ashes into the little brook called “Swift.” Five 
centuries later, Andrew Fuller, the friend of 
William Carey, quaintly remarks :—‘‘The brook 
did convey his ashes to the Avon, the Avon 
into Severn, the Severn into the narrow sea; 
these into the main ocean, and thus the ashes of 
Wycliffe were an emblem of his doctrine, which 
is now dispersed all the world over.” 

A granite column now marks the place where 
once his body lay, with an inscription which 
would have had his approval,— 


“Search the Scriptures!” 


What a man he was!—A tall thin figure, clad 
in black gown; a flowing beard, clear cut fea- 
tures and penetrating eyes, lips resolute; kingly, 
yet kindly withal, rightly called as he stands 
there amid the shadows, the “Morning Star of 
the Reformation” and this because he was the 
Morning Star of the Open Bible. 

Why call John Wycliffe the Morning Star 
of the Open Bible? 

In Wycliffe’s day, the Bible was a lost book. 
Even the clergy did not know the Bible and did 
not want to know it. The common people re- 
ceived all they knew of religion from the priests. 


WYCLIFFE 45 


The revival of learning aided so greatly by 
Dante in Europe by his writing the Divine 
Comedy in the common language of Tuscany, 
instead of the not commonly understood Latin, 
captured the imagination of Wycliffe. He 
sought for light and found the Bible. Having 
found the Bible, he felt others should find it 
too, and so he set to work to translate it into the 
common language, not the Norman French 
spoken at court, but the common English of the 
people. He knew that the Bible would be a 
closed book no matter what the language in 
which translated, unless it is known. It was a 
day of manuscripts, before printing had come 
in, so he had copies made and sent out his 
preachers to preach the Bible in the common 
tongue. The creative idea of Wycliffe was to 
put the Bible and reason into the practical liv- 
ing of every Christian. 

As the monk objected to Dante writing high 
thoughts in common language, even more 
strenuously did the ecclesiastics object to Wy- 
cliffe’s translation of the Bible, saying “the 
English language was not a fit instrument for 
the Bible, the vulgar tongue too common for the 
holy word.” 

Ecclesiastical Councils had forbidden com- 
mon people to read the Bible or have a copy 
in their possession; but Wycliffe said,— 
“Though there were one hundred popes and all 
the world were turned into cardinals, yet we 
should learn more from the Gospels than from 


4.6 STARS OF THE MORNING 


all the multitude”; and what Christian, what- 
ever his creed, dare dispute it? 

What effect Wycliffe’s Bible and his Lol- 
lards’ preaching has had on succeeding genera- 
tions cannot be estimated. Put the Bible into 
the hands of a people and you have sown the 
seed of liberty—ecclesiastical, political, indus- 
trial, spiritual. Wycliffe opened the Bible and 
bid the English people read! And how they 
loved it! To obtain a copy of a little part of 
Scripture some paid $2003; some a load of hay 
for a few chapters of a Gospel or letter, and 
while they were ordered by the Church to 
burn it, there are one hundred and seventy of 
Wycliffe’s copies still existing, though there was 
no printing press at that time. His effect on 
the reformation was great. John Huss amid his 
persecution exclaimed, “I am content that my 
soul be where Wycliffe’s is.” 

In one of the last public addresses of Dr. 
Russell H. Conwell, he told of going with a 
party up Mt. Ararat. The way was hard and 
dangerous and some of the party wanted to go 
back, but others wanted to reach the top. The 
guide was finally persuaded by a bribe to go 
back. The few who wanted to go on, could not, 
without a guide. Dr. Conwell said, “It was a 
mean thing to steal our guide, for we could not 
go on without him and he was the only guide 
we had.” Then placing his hand upon the 
Bible, he said, “If any man tries to steal this 
Book from me, he is my enemy, for it is the 


WYCLIFFE 47 


only guide I have up to the top of the moun- 
tain.” No matter what his name, or garb, or 
claim, he is a mean enemy who will steal the 
open Bible from aman. He is a herald of the 
day, who opens the Bible to others. 

Back in Josiah’s day the “Book of the Law,” 
the Bible of that day, had been lost. An old 
priest, Hilkiah, cleaning out a dark corner of 
the ‘Temple, found the only copy. To-day the 
Bible, in whole or part, is printed in more than 
six hundred different dialects and languages. 
In sales, the Bible this last year outnumbered 
the leading “best sellers,” put together. 

Yet with so many copies in the hands of peo- 
ple there is danger that the Bible be a lost book. 
How many of us have read the Bible to-day? 
This week? How many know it well enough 
to obey it?) The Bible in any language is of no 
value unless it be translated into life. It is not 
a talisman to bring good luck into a home, nor 
a magic wand to ward off a bullet from a sol- 
dier’s heart. It is not a text book to furnish 
ammunition for an argument. It is a guide to 
tell us how to go to the top of life’s mountain. 
Only as it is translated into living, does it bring 
the day. 

There he shines, John Wycliffe, the Star of 
the Open Bible, bidding us read and make it 
ours; bidding us live and make it theirs who 
know it not. Only so will the day of freedom 
come. 


48 STARS OF THE MORNING 


‘“Flistory’s pages but record 
One Death grapple in the darkness ’tween old 
systems 
And the Word.” 


Everywhere the open Bible goes and is trans- 
lated into living, it brings light and refinement 
of character. So each age adds to the cumu- 
lative evidence of its worth. We have the word 
of prophecy “made more sure.” 

Now let us lay down this book and hunt our 
Bible. Let us read the Gospel of John three 
times right through; then read the book of Acts, 
then right through the New Testament! Let us 
go right on reading and practicing the Bible,— 


“until the day dawn 
And the day star arise 
in our hearts!” 


Even so shall we usher in the day heralded 
five centuries ago by the Morning Star of the 
Open Bible, John Wycliffe. 


THE MORNING STAR OF 
EVANGELISM 


JOHN HUSS 
BOHEMIA 


(1369-1415), 


“With Wycliffe, we begin the definite chain of events 
which, passing through Huss, found a culmination in Luther, 
Zwingli and Calvin.” 

William J. Kuhns. 


‘‘And he preached the word to them.’”—Mark II: 2. 


HUSS 


IN answer to the President of the United 
States as to the conditions under which they 
would consider peace with Germany, the Allies 
announced as one of these,—the liberation of 
Czecho-Slovakia from Austria-Hungary. To- 
day we are reading much of this new and pro- 
gressive European Republic. Look at a new 
map of Europe and you will find this little 
country, midway between the Baltic and the 
Adriatic Seas surrounded by Germany, Austria- 
Hungary and Poland. With an enviable his- 
tory of bravery, it has survived the vicissitudes 
of centuries and rises to-day a young and for- 
ward-looking Republic, Czecho-Slovakia. Its 
former name was Bohemia, a land made famous 
by John Huss, the Morning Star of Evangelism. 

In this land of stalwart men, John Huss was 
born July 6th, 1369, near Hussinic. His name 
was taken from the castle near which he first 
saw the light of day. Unlike Dante and Wy- 
cliffe, whose parents were well to do, Huss was 
born of peasant parentage. Practically nothing 
is known of his early life. Like Elijah, he 
emerges into history full grown. In September 
1393 when Huss is twenty-four years old, we 
find him receiving his B.A. degree from the 
University of Prague; at twenty-five, his B.Th. 

51 


§2 STARS OF THE MORNING 


and at twenty-seven his M.A. At twenty-nine, 
he becomes a public teacher. At the age of 
thirty he begins defending Wycliffe’s writings. 
He is master among masters, for at this time the 
University of Prague numbered 30,000 students. 
To it flocked men of all nations of Europe, even 
from England. Among its postgraduates were 
two hundred with doctors’ degrees; five hundred 
with B.A. degrees. At the age of thirty-two, 
John Huss becomes Dean of the Philosophical 
Department, and at thirty-three, Rector of the 
whole University. This was in 1409. 

A few years before this date, two citizens of — 
Prague had built, at their own expense, a large 
chapel and called it “Bethlehem Chapel” with 
this stipulation;—‘that sermons should be 
preached in the Bohemian language every Sun- 
day morning and afternoon and on holidays.” 
Here was Huss’s great life work. Palachy says, 
‘The sermons preached during many years by 
this man in Bethlehem Chapel were among the 
most important events of his time.” 

He was a great orator appealing to common 
sense, and to Scripture, in an age when neither 
of these were much in evidence in religion. 
The writings of John Wycliffe greatly in- 
fluenced Huss, and he put into living words 
what Wycliffe had put in writing. The com- 
mon people heard him gladly, but students also 
flocked to listen to his word. The Queen was 
a regular attendant at the Chapel services. 

In preparing his sermons he carefully studied 


HUSS 53 


the Bible. The contrast of its teachings with 
the practices of the church caused him to paint 
in vivid colors the corruption of the clergy; the 
ostentation of the hierarchy; the difference be- 
tween the lowly Jesus riding into Jerusalem on 
a donkey and the pomp and show of the heads 
of the church; a contrast not without its dupli- 
cates today. 

While to the very end, he remained in the 
church, and had no thought of being a heretic, 
his study of Scripture, applied to the condition 
of the church in his day, led him into contro- 
versy with the powers that were, and finally to 
the stake. 

And surely Huss had much material for his 
sermons on the corruption of the church of his 
day. Luther later wrote of this period as the 
“Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy” during 
which time French popes ruled in Avignon a 
“sink of corruption.” At this time comes a con- 
fusion in the apostolic succession of the papacy. 
On the death of Gregory XI, Urban VI is 
elected; a short time after Clement VII. Urban 
is supported by Germany, Hungary, Poland, 
Bohemia and England, and Clement VII by 
France. God seems to have had nothing much 
to do with it. A third party now arose and op- 
posed both Popes, and a council was called to 
settle the matter, the council of Pisa. By this 
time two new popes were reigning—Benedict 
XIII in France at Avignon and Gregory XII 
in Rome. The council declared these dethroned 


54 STARS OF THE MORNING 


and a new Pope was elected called Alexander 
V, so now there were three heads instead of 
one. Alexander soon died and in his place in 
1410 came John XXIII to the papal throne, 
whose character and reputation were such, that 
the less said the better. 

A scandal so great as this could not remain 
a matter of indifference to John Huss, and he 
launched forth in no uncertain terms. 

The playing upon the superstition of the peo- 
ple by the clergy also stirred his indignation. 
One example will suffice. A church in Wils- 
nack was destroyed and on the altar were found 
remaining after the fire, three wafers, colored 
red. The priests said it was the blood of Christ, 
a marvelous miracle! Immediately people from 
all parts of the country began to flock that way. 
A profitable business thus came to Wilsnack. 
Wonderful miracles were reported. Huss was 
appointed on a committee to investigate. One 
man from Prague with a withered hand, gave 
his silver hand to the priest to see what would 
happen. After three days when the priest 
thought he had departed he said,—“Hear, chil- 
dren about a new miracle. Behold a citizen of 
Prague has been cured of a withered hand, 
through the blood of Christ, in witness thereof 
he has brought his silver hand as an offering.” 
The citizen immediately called out, “See, here 
is my hand, withered as before!” 

If this miracle was false, how about all the 
rest? 


HUSS sc 


Because John Huss would not remain silent 
against these and kindred abuses, the enmity of 
the church was aroused against him. Because 
he introduced Wycliffe’s writings and taught his 
views, fuel was added to the flame. 

The last spark was added to Huss’s eloquence, 
when on a May morning in 1412, Wenzel Tiem 
came into Prague selling indulgences. One of 
the reigning popes needed money. Great 
crowds gathered to pay in advance for the privi- 
lege of sinning. A thriving business went on. 
Of course Huss could not hold his peace and 
like Luther a hundred years later, he nailed up 
his theses against all such practices, and his elo- 
quence stirred his congregation in Bethlehem 
Chapel. 

The pope sent word that he should cease 
preaching. Imagine! He refused, of course. 
A ban of excommunication was issued against 
him. Amid the ringing of church bells and ex- 
tinguishing of candles on the altars, the curse of 
the church was laid upon him. No good mem- 
ber of the church would give him food or shel- 
ter. If he should enter a church the service 
would straightway cease. It was ordered also 
that Bethlehem Chapel be destroyed. And 
finally in 1412 John Huss like Dante from Flor- 
ence, and Wycliffe from Oxford, became an ex- 
ile from his loved city of Prague with his happy 
associations in Bethlehem Chapel and Univer- 
sity, for the simple crime of trying to make the 
Bible a book of life to his generation. 


56 STARS OF THE MORNING 


During his exile, he was busy preaching and 
writing. Of special value was his translation of 
the Bible in the Bohemian language, thus fol- 
lowing closely the example of Wycliffe. 

Then came his summons to appear before the 
Council at Constance for trial. His friends 
tried to keep him from going, for they knew 
that it was already decided what they would do 
to him, and though Huss must also have known, 
he was anxious to defend his views before that 
body even at cost of his life. A “safe conduct” 
was given by Emperor Sigismund. Accompa- 
nied by three noblemen, his friends, he started 
on his journey to Constance. It took on the 
aspect of a triumphal march, for in every town 
he was greeted by large and enthusiastic crowds 
who listened eagerly and sympathetically to his 
eloquent preaching. After twenty days’ travel, 
on November 3rd, 1414, he arrived in Con- 
stance. 

He took lodgings with a poor widow, and 
matters seemed to open auspiciously for him. 
The story of these days makes interesting read- 
ing, but only a bare outline can be given here. 

Huss had not been in the city long before a 
delegation came inviting him to meet a body of 
cardinals to explain his doctrines. After he had 
spoken a little while they said, “Verily these are 
good words,” and they left him one by one. 
Hardly had the last one gone, when a learned 
cardinal in the guise of a simple monk, came 
and tried to entrap Huss. Huss soon suspected 


HUSS 67 


him and said, “Brother, you say you are simple, 
but I think you are double.” And Huss finds 
that the cardinals had played a trick on him and 
that he, in this wily way, had become a prisoner. 
Hardly a dignified business for cardinals, one 
would think! . 

That night he was taken away and imprisoned 
in a dark dungeon near a sewer in a Dominican 
Monastery, where he remained until March 
24th, 1415. Then he was imprisoned in a high 
tower in a Franciscan Monastery at Gottlieben, 
chained at night to the wall, and for no other 
reason than that he persisted in remaining true 
to Scripture. Here, he remained until June. 

Many efforts were made to make Huss re- 
cant, but his answer was always the same, “If 
I have preached the truth, why should IJ recant. 
If I recant, I confess that I have preached error 
and what of my flock? If you can show me in 
error, of this [ recant.” 

_ At last on July sth, 1415 he stands before the 
council. What a view! Emperor, pope, car- 
dinals, prelates in gala garb! Huss weakened 
in body, wracked with rheumatism contracted 
in the damp cell, with toothache, sick, yet firm 
in spirit never wavering even for a moment! 
With courage rarely known even in the brave 
annals of martyrdom, there he stands, the elo- 
quent preacher of righteousness. ‘They harass 
him, laugh derisively at him, these heads of the 
church. For three days they mock him for his 
faith, yet quiet, kindly but firm as a rock, he 


58 STARS OF THE MORNING 


stands, as he listens to his condemnation, “to be 
burned at the stake with his writings.” 

The day came July 6th, 1415; his forty-sixth 
birthday. They placed him on a raised plat- 
form and put priestly robes on him, and a tall 
paper crown eighteen inches high on which 
were painted devils and the word “‘arch-heretic.” 
His soul was consigned to hell. Then he was 
disrobed, and taken to the stake. He was tied 
to the stake, his face toward the east. But they 
decided it was not proper for a heretic to die 
facing the east, so they faced him toward the 
west. Who cares which way, forsoothe 

And so he dies, never once wavering. His 
ashes are taken and thrown into the Rhine, that 
they might not become a shrine to his admirers. 

But the very spot became precious to the 
Bohemians who carried some of the ground back 
to their enraged countrymen and later wrote a 
letter to the council,—a brave thing to do in 
that day, saying,—‘‘And notwithstanding all that 
has passed, we are resolved to sacrifice our lives 
for the defense of the law of Jesus Christ and 
his faithful preachers, who declare it with zeal, 
humility and constancy, without being shocked 
by all human constitutions that shall oppose this 
resolution.” ‘They were summoned to the coun- 
cil, but refused the kindly invitation. Instead, 
enraged, frenzied, they formed themselves into 
an army and withstood the combined efforts of 
Europe in three crusades against them; a thrill- 
ing story, and laid the foundation for the mod- 


HUSS 59 


etn liberty-loving republic of Czecho-Slovakia. 
Truly the blood of martyrs in this case also be- 
came the seed of the church. 

Why call John Huss the Morning Star of 
Evangelism? The world was in the darkness 
of night. People were taught to believe that God 
had delegated His power on earth both tem- 
poral and spiritual, to the pope as His own vice- 
regent. Not to believe in this was a mortal sin. 
God was afar off, and could only be approached 
by men through the mediation of priests. All 
who conformed to the outward form were saved, 
no matter what the condition of heart. So the 
people were steeped in superstition and help- 
lessness, and made fertile ground for all sorts of 
evil within and without the church. 

Against this situation, John Huss literally 
raised his voice as an eloquent preacher of 
righteousness within. With mind enriched in 
the study of Scripture, with heart aflame with 
indignation against a corrupt church, with love 
for his Bohemian brethren, his tongue touched 
with the coal of eloquence, he became a flame 
of fire lighting up the dark firmament. 

That he considered preaching his great task, 
is evidenced in a letter he wrote, “I hope that 
the life of Christ, that I painted through His 
word at Bethlehem in the hearts of men, and 
that his enemies have tried to destroy by forbid- 
ding all preaching in the Chapel and wishing 
to raze it to the ground; I[ hope, I say, that this 
same life will be better drawn in the future by 


60 STARS OF THE MORNING 


preachers more eloquent than I, to the great joy 
of the people who cling with all their hearts to 
Christ. I shall rejoice myself when I awake; 
that is, when [ shall rise again from the dead.” 

An old Egyptian myth tells of a bird, called 
the Phoenix which when about to die, burned it- 
self upon a nest of fragrant wood, and from the 
ashes there rose a new and strong bird. ‘Thus it 
begat its young. Among the Romans the 
Phoenix was used as a symbol of the sun rising 
to create the dawn. 

This seems a fitting symbol of the burning of 
John Huss. Like the sweet refrain recurring in 
a symphony his biographies record this of him 
in all his trials, “He continued to preach.” “He 
continued to preach,” until at last his voice was 
stilled in burning fire. From that funeral pyre, 
made fragrant by an unflinching devotion that 
never faltered for a moment, has arisen a new 
and stronger posterity, direct children of that 
martyrdom, the Hussites, the Moravians, the 
Lollards and the innumerable hosts, who 
through these five centuries have had their 
tongues touched with eloquence from that altar. 
A new day is arising when men everywhere are 
hearing the old story in their own tongue. In 
the light of this new shining, let us never lose 
sight for long, of that brave herald who pio- 
neered in preaching, John Huss the Morning 
Star of Modern Evangelism. Let us highly re- 
solve that he shall not have died in vain! 


THE MORNING STAR OF INTEGRITY 


GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA 
DE AY 


(1452-1498) 


“We shall soon be there where we can sing with David, 
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell 
together in unity.’ ”’ | 

Savonarola. 


“For Thou art my rock and my fortress; therefore for 
Thy name’s sake lead me and guide me.” —Psalm 31: 3. 


SAVONAROLA 


Just forty years before Columbus sailed the 
seas toward America Girolamo Savonarola was 
born in a little town in Northern Italy, Ferrara, 
September 14th, 1452. Dante had been dead 
one hundred and thirty years, Wycliffe seventy 
years, and John Huss had burned at the stake 
only thirty-seven years before. Girolamo was 
the third child in a family of seven children. 
Of a quiet temperament he enjoyed the com- 
panionship of his grandfather, a noted physi- 
cian, rather than that of his own age. 

It was a crude and brutal time into which 
he was born. Asa child he saw citizens slaugh- 
tered in the streets in political feuds. He had 
seen Pope Pius II, under a crimson canopy in 
great splendor of regalia and retinue parade the 
streets while a hungry, ragged mob looked on, 
at this vicegerent of an empty religion. The 
profligate youthful pleasures of the day had no 
appeal to him. He loved study, and study of 
that day was scholastic. <Aristotle’s was the 
great text book; but Thomas Aquinas stirred 
him most. Aristotle trained him in logic. 
Thomas Aquinas led him to the Bible, which 
fascinated and held him. Day after day he 
poured over its pages. Sometimes his sad spirit 
found solace in his lute, but the chief pleasure 

63 


64, STARS OF THE MORNING 


of his early days, was the company of his grand- 
father with whom he rambled through the fields 
and when tired of walking, together they read 
Thomas Aquinas. 

One day there moved next door, an exiled 
citizen of Florence of noble birth, bringing 
along a young daughter, who soon joined them 
in their rambles. ~These were the happiest, most 
care-free days of Savonarola’s life; but they 
were short lived, for Savonarola soon came to 
love the girl and declared his affection. With 
haughtiness she exclaimed, “Do you imagine 
that the blood of the Strozzi could form an alli- 
ance with that of Savonarola?” His grandfa- 
ther had hoped that he would be a physician. 
But now more than ever, he sought solace in re- 
ligion. He looked on the pleasure and hollow- 
ness of life and exclaimed, ‘“‘What are all the 
gilt and splendor when filled with vice and sin.” 
When twenty years of age he writes a poem, ex- 
pressing this idea, “De Ruina Mundi.” 

His partly formed purpose to flee the world 
with its emptiness, and seek refuge in the monas- 
tic life, was given a definite turn by a sermon 
which he heard at Faenza. An obscure Augus- 
tinian monk said something in that sermon 
which crystallized his half-formed purpose, and 
one day as he sat playing his lute, he struck a 
note so sad that his mother said, ““My son, that 
is a sign of parting.” Such it proved to be, for 
though his love for his home was great, and 
continued so to the end of his days, on St. 


SAVONAROLA 65 


George’s Day, April 24th, 1475 at the age of 
twenty-three, while all the town was loud in 
holiday merrymaking, he walked the twenty- 
eight miles across the plains to Bologna and 
begged admission at the Dominican convent. 
As he entered he fondly hoped he had left the 
sins and vanities of the world outside. 

Two days later he wrote a letter home which 
shows his state of mind and the sincerity of his 
purpose in taking this step. In the course of 
the letter he breaks into prayer, “Show me the 
path in which I should walk, for to Thee do I 
lift up my soul,—O Jesus, rather let me die a 
thousand deaths than that I should be so un- 
grateful as to oppose Thy will!” 

In the monastery, he sought the lowliest ser- 
vices. Long were his prayers and vigils, frugal 
his meals, coarse his clothing, sincere his pur- 
pose. By the most austere paths, he sought to 
rise into close fellowship with the Divine. But 
alas, he found that the heart inside a monastery 
was no different in essence from that without. 
Intrigues, jealousies, immoralities were there 
also, from the profligate Pope Sixtus IV, to the 
“brothers” of his own order. Within a year 
after his entrance, he wrote a companion poem 
to his “De Ruina Mundi,” “De Ruina Eccle- 
ste,” in which he pictures the church as a dishev- 
elled Virgin, dethroned and put to confusion by 
“a false harlot,” and in indignation he cries out, 
—“O God, lady, that I could break those great 
wings!” 


66 STARS OF THE MORNING 


His exceptional scholarship was soon recog- 

nized, and he was put to teaching. More time 
was available for study, but increased learning 
along the lines of the renaissance which was 
knowledge in order to increase pleasure, more 
and more lost its appeal, and he exclaimed, 
‘What does all this wisdom of philosophy serve 
for, if a poor old woman, established in faith, 
knows more of the true wisdom than Plator” 
He turned more and more to the Bible and in 
it found satisfaction for his heart. It is said 
that he committed the entire Bible to memory. 
The Old Testament appealed to him especially. 
In obedience to Scripture he found the only 
hope of uplift for society, the state, the church. 
This is the keynote of his life and work. 
_ The Dominicans were a preaching order and 
in 1481 when twenty-nine years old he was sent 
to his native town, Ferrara, to preach. His ser- 
mons seemed to make but little impression. 
From this mission, he was ordered to go not to 
his old monastery at Bologna but to Florence. 

What must have been the feeling of this 
scholar as he crossed the Apennines and looked 
into the valley of the Arno, upon the beautiful 
city of Florence with its graceful campanile by 
Giotto; the dome of the Duomo which Michel- 
angelo used as his model for St. Peter’s Cathe- 
dral at Rome, the baptistery of St. John, the 
beautiful bronze doors which Michelangelo 
said were fit to be the doors to Paradise. What 
literary recollections must have been his as he 


SAVONAROLA 67 


pondered over the fair city of culture, once the 
home of the gifted Dante, and where even now 
a bright galaxy of talented men, among them 
young Michelangelo, were living! 

Florence was at this time a nominal republic. 
In reality she was ruled with despotic power by 
the Medici family. Lorenzo di Medici was 
now in full sway. He was a patron of art, lit- 
erature, beauty of all sorts excepting the beauty 
of a good life. Florence had become a second 
Athens, with paganism reproduced; a place of 
“slittering godlessness.” 

Here in the convent of San Marco, Savona- 
rola was put to work teaching novices. In 1482 
he was appointed to preach the Lenten sermons 
in San Lorenzo, but here, too, his audiences 
dwindled away. 

Two years later Savonarola was sent to San 
Geniguano to preach. There in his sermons he 
expounded three propositions,—First;—The 
scourging of the church. Second ;—The regen- 
eration of the church. Third ;—The imminency 
of these. 

He had ample ammunition for his first propo- | 
sition. Pope Sixtus IV had died. He had been 
a murderer. The best in the church hoped for 
a better pope. Innocent VIII was elected 
through fraud and bribery. He came to the 
papacy, having illegitimate sons whom he ad- 
vanced with unblushing effrontery. 

These sermons among the hills of Siena with 
their definite message showed the first elements 


68 STARS OF THE MORNING 


of power in Savonarola as a preacher. It was 
at Brescia, however, in 1486 that he really finds 
his preaching power. Here, taking Revelation 
as his topic, he attracted and held great crowds 
and for the first time feels that the pulpit is the 
place where he can best move men toward his 
Master. 

For three years he goes about preaching, when 
in 1489 he is recalled to Florence and in mount- 
ing the pulpit, prophesies that he will preach 
eight years,—a prediction which proved true. 

From this time on his power grows, great 
crowds gather to hear him preach. Wooden 
galleries had to be constructed in the Duomo to 
accommodate the crowds, and even these proved 
inadequate. All classes form his congregation. 
Amid growing popularity Savonarola main- 
tained the simplicity of his purpose to please 
God and serve Him. ‘Two incidents will show 
the spirit of the man;—fearless of men, fearful 
only of God. 

One of these was in his attitude toward Lo- 
renzo, on the occasion of Savonarola becoming 
Prior of San Marco in 1491. To be made Prior 
was to have the opportunity of living like a 
prince. The first duty of the Prior was to call 
on Lorenzo, the governor of Florence, to thank 
him, and thus to show that the church was loyal 
to the state. But Savonarola neglected to con- 
form to the custom and did not go. The older 
friars became nervous and suggested that he had 
better go. “Who named me to be Prior, God 


SAVONAROLA 69 


or Lorenzor” he asked. ‘God,’ was the answer. 
“Then,” said he, “to Him alone will I give 
thanks and not to mortal man.” Moreover he 
preached a sermon in the Duomo in which, al- 
though he mentioned no names, he arraigned the 
autocracy in both church and. state, and called 
them to repentance. At this time, too, he pre- 
dicts that Lorenzo, the Pope, and the King of 
Naples, were soon to come to an end. 

The other incident showing his fearlessness of 
pomp occurred during his preaching the Lenten 
sermons at Bologna in 1493. The haughty wife 
of the Lord of Bologna came regularly with a 
pompous train of attendants and was habitually 
late. Savonarola attempted to shame her by 
pausing in his sermon till she was seated. This 
had no effect. So he tried a general admonition 
against lateness. She still came late. At last, 
one day, she came late creating a great disturb- 
ance while Savonarola was preaching. Greatly 
aroused, he cried out, “Behold, here comes the 
devil to disturb the word of God.” In a rage, 
she ordered two soldiers to strike him down, but 
they had neither the hardihood nor the desire 
apparently, for nothing happened. A plot was 
made to slay him, and in his last sermon at 
Bologna he said, ‘““This afternoon I will take the 
road to Florence, with my slender staff and 
wooden flask. Nevertheless, it is not my fate to 
die at Bologna.” 

And now begins his great political power in 
Florence. Lorenzo died. It is a fact to be no- 


70 STARS OF THE MORNING 


ticed that in spite of the breach, Lorenzo on his 
death-bed sent for Savonarola. So do the sin- 
ful in their extremity seek at the last, help from 
those who are really good. 

On the death of Lorenzo, Piero de Medici 
sought to rule. He had all of the vices, but none 
of the virtues of his father and the better people 
did not want him. ~ Savonarola preached in the 
Duomo on “Justice” and “Liberty” and perhaps 
unconsciously, but surely, fanned the flame 
against Piero. About this time also, another of 
his prophecies came true. Pope Innocent VIII 
died. In his place was chosen a notorious 
Spaniard of the Borgia family, a man flagrantly 
immoral, elected by bribery. He took the title 
of Alexander VI. Now began a series of ser- 
mons based upon visions Savonarola asserted he 
had, a strange mixture at times, but with evident 
power and influence over the people of Florence 
of all grades. 

Now, too, he began a series of reforms, be- 
ginning with his own convent. To make these 
effective, Savonarola must have complete au- 
thority, so he sought freedom from the authority 
of other convents. Assisted by the liberty-lov- 
ing Florentines and other influential friends, a 
brief was secured from the Pope severing the 
Dominican monastery of Florence from those of 
Lombardy. This explains the large measure of 
liberty to Savonarola in his reform movements 
in the years following. With rigor he enforced 
the original vows upon his convent of poverty 


SAVONAROLA 71 


and obedience and vigils, yet the monks loved 
him. 

Opportunity is not afforded here to tell of his 
political services, save that the Signory of Flor- 
ence appealed to him for help in establishing a 
real democracy in Florence. The pulpit of the 
Duomo becomes the fulcrum of power in the 
government also. ‘The officers of the govern- 
ment came to church to learn what policies they 
shall pursue, and they obeyed his teaching. 
Twice, single-handed, he saved the city from the 
ravages of the French King Charles VIII, by 
his exceptional personality and evident sincerity. 

Having vigorously set himself to reform the 
monasteries and the government of the city, he 
now turns to the immoralities and indecencies of 
the society of the city. He leads processions 
through the streets. ‘Trinkets, vanities, lewd 
pictures and songs are surrendered and piled in 
a great pyramid and burned. 

Savonarola is undoubtedly at this time the 
leading power in Florence. But such popularity 
and power cannot long be maintained without 
awakening jealousies and opposition. So the 
shadows began to gather. The aristocracy con- 
spires against him who championed the com- 
mon people. The evil element in the populace 
is sullen under his moral restraints. ‘The Pope 
orders him to stop his attacks on the church and 
tries to bribe him with a cardinal’s hat, to which 
offer he replies “I seek neither hat nor mitre. I 
desire only that which thou hast given to thy 


5° STARS OF THE MORNING 


saints—death—a crimson hat, a hat of blood.” 

At last he is excommunicated and everyone 
forbidden to have any dealings with him what- 
ever. | 

Very soon all moral restraints were broken, 
and the streets of Florence became scenes of 
wildest revelry. Then begins a wavering of his 
fortunes like the heaving of the sea. Defending 
himself, pronouncing the pope anathema be- 
cause of his immoral life, sometimes Savonarola 
rises to high crests of power and popularity; 
once he is even offered absolution by the pope if 
he will pay a fine of five hundred crowns to a 
certain creditor, which Savonarola refuses of 
course to do. 

Gradually the net tightens, drawn by his 
political and ecclesiastical enemies, and the li- 
cense loving part of the populace. 

At last he is arrested. As he steps outside San 
Marco in the night, amid the flare of torches, the 
devilish glee of the crowd breaks all bounds. 
Stones are hurled at him, insults heaped upon 
him. They even kick him as he passes through 
their midst, all forgetful that twice he had saved 
their city and them from the ravages of the in- 
vading French. So soon does the mad crowd 
forget. Thus in the dead of night, lke his 
Master, Savonarola is arrested, with his faithful 
friends Fra Domenico and Fra Silvestro. 

Like the Master, too, he has three mock trials. 
In the upper hall of the Bargello, he is put to 
torture. Drawn up by a rope attached to the 


SAVONAROLA 72 


roof of the building, he is suddenly dropped 
with a violent jerk almost to the floor. Every 
muscle and sinew is strained. His finely sensi- 
tive frame, enfeebled by long vigils, quivers with 
agony. Again and again, day after day, this 
anguish is repeated, until he cries, ““O Lord, take 
away my life!” Yet when the day is over, kneel- 
ing in his wretched cell he prays—‘‘Father, for- 
give them, for they know not what they do!” 
No cause worthy of death could they find. A 
notary once befriended by Savonarola, basely 
offers to twist the evidence for four hundred 
ducats. Again Savonarola is placed on a pulley 
and sometimes hot coals seer the soles of his feet. 

His first trial continued for more than a week, 
but with no evidence sufficient to condemn him. 
After a brief respite they try again, with the 
same result. The notary who thus failed even in 
his dishonesty, to incriminate him, is paid thirty 
ducats instead of four hundred, and so somewhat 
like his Master he is betrayed by a friend for 
thirty pieces of silver. 

The pope is wearying of the long drawn out 
trial and now a bargain is struck—if the pope 
will grant the Signory the privilege of levying a 
tax on ecclesiastical property, they in turn will 
assure him of the death of Savonarola. So the 
government of Florence and the Pope of the 
Roman Church, form an agreement based on 
murder—the Signory can levy a tax of ten per 
cent. on ecclesiastical property for three years 
on condition that Savonarola is slain. 


74. STARS OF THE MORNING 


The Piagnoni, as the party in favor of Savon- 
arola, was called, using the figures ten per cent. 
and three years, remarked, “Three times ten 
make thirty; Savonarola, like the Saviour, is 
sold for thirty pieces of silver.” 

During these negotiations Savonarola had 
peace in his cell. This respite he employed in 
writing expositions on the thirty-second and 
fifty-first Psalms. Read these Psalms and see 
him as he sits there, knowing that death is not 
far off, ‘“‘Blessed is he whose sin is forgiven’ — 
‘“Thou shalt preserve me from trouble”—“Shout 
for joy, ye upright in heart!’ Blessed, safe, 
joyous, such he felt himself to be even in that 
situation, because he was right with God. 

Then came the third disgraceful trial, with 
now the papal legates present. He is stripped, 
and in spite of his left arm being wrenched and 
helpless, is drawn upon the pulley ’til he is de- 
lirious. At last the sentence is issued. “A dead 
enemy makes no more war,” the papal legate 
sagely remarks. The next day, May 23rd, 1498, 
he is to die. That night he talks to his two fel- 
low prisoners who are to suffer a like fate and 
bids them be brave. Then in his cell in com- 
pany with an old friend, Niccolini, who re- 
mained true, he lies on the floor and asks if he 
may pillow his weary head on Niccolini’s knees. 
So he sleeps. 

Three platforms had been reared in the 
Piazza Signora, one for the presiding bishop, 
one for the papal commission, one for the city 
governors. 


SAVONAROLA 76 


The bishop, an old friend, said in faltering 
voice, as Savonarola is stripped of his priestly 
robe, “I separate thee from the Church militant 
and triumphant.” “Militant, not triumphant; 
that is not in your power,” Savonarola quickly 
says. “Amen,” said the bishop, softly, ‘““may God 
lead you there.” The papal commission reading 
the sentence said, “His Holiness is pleased to 
free you from the pains of purgatory. Do you 
accept itr” And strange to us, he did accept, 
showing he still believed in the divine power of 
the papacy, in spite of the profligate pope. The 
third, the civil tribunal, pronounces the sentence, 
that he be hanged and then burned. 

In bare feet, over a high scaffold, the three 
men go. Ribald youths punch the soles of their 
feet with sharp sticks through cracks in the 
boards as they pass. A noose is placed about 
their necks, first Fra Silvestro, then Fra Domin- 
iG0,then Savonarola, The heat ‘of the fire 
raises his right arm, and there amid the flames, 
in the attitude he used to take when blessing his 
great congregations in the Duomo, the great 
leader died, and his ashes were thrown into the 
Arno. 

George M’Hardy writes of the people after 
his death, ““They gathered every relic of him 
they could possibly find; they came often to 
pray at the spot where he perished; they de- 
posited flowers there every year on the anniver- 
sary of his death; and the practice was taken 
up by devout souls in succeeding generations, 


76 STARS OF THE MORNING 


and continued unbroken for two centuries or 
more. His books were eagerly read; the details 
of his life were industriously collected; and 
ardent disciples found a pious joy in giving a 
record of his career and work to the world.” 

Why call him the Morning Star of Integrity? 
He lived in the time of the renaissance when the 
old scholasticism was giving place to quest for 
knowledge. The Greek writers were the objects 
of study. Art was coming to the front. Men 
were seeking these not to make the world bet- 
ter, but to minister to their own pleasures and 
vices. Knowledge became the agent of their 
sensuous pleasures. Savonarola cried out against 
such use of learning as wicked and less than the 
least knowledge that is tempered with godli- 
ness. 

He was living in a day when the poor man 
had no rights, and he took the side of these 
against the insolent, presumptuous aristocracy 
of church and state. He was a part of a church 
whose practices were despicable, and yet which 
claimed absolute authority over the life and 
soul of people here and hereafter. Against this 
claim, he asserted the right of the human soul 
and conscience,—a hopeless and irreconcilable 
antagonism. 

In these three realms of darkness, the dark- 
ness of personal sin; the darkness of political 
night; the darkness of ecclesiastical vice, he 
shines as the brightness of the morning star. 
Amid the shining we hear his pleading voice; 


SAVONAROLA 77 


—“God is willing to give thee a Head, a King 
to govern thee. This King is Christ. Suffer 
thyself to be guided by Him. .. . Take Christ 
for thy Master and remain subject to His law.” 

To all these, the individual, the state, the 
Church, he would pronounce this hope, and to 
pronounce it he would remain true, with an in- 
tegrity unshaken even unto death. If Dante 
dared to couch high thoughts in language com- 
mon people could understand; if Wycliffe suf- 
fered, to place the Bible in the hands of the 
poor; if Huss burned that all men might intelli- 
gently worship God, it was given to Savonarola 
to join this galaxy of morning stars, as he with 
unshaken integrity lived and died to bring about 
uprightness in person, church and state. 

In the Piazza Della Signoria, the visitor to 
Florence to-day will find a fountain pouring 
forth its cooling waters. ‘The fountain marks 
the place where some four hundred and twenty- 
five years ago on a May morning, the body of 
Savonarola, aged forty-five years, crumbled into 
ashes amid the flames. 

And lo, instead of ashes, his spirit like the 
cooling waters of the fountain now refreshes 
him who drinks, and he who drinks but illy re- 
pays such integrity, who does not stand for those 
same noble truths until Jesus, not sin, nor 
tyranny, either of state or church, shall reign in 
all the realms of men, and the day of upright- 
ness be ushered in, of which Fra Girolamo Say- 
onarola is a bright and morning star. 





THE MORNING STAR OF 
TOLERATION 


WILLIAM THE SILENT 
GERMANY-HOLLAND 
(1533-1584), 


“He was one of the most charming of companions, bril- 
liant of address, of so winning a manner that it was said, 
‘Every time he took his hat off he won a subject from the 
King of Spain.’ ” 

Newell Dwight Hillis. 


“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from hence- 
forth: yea, saith the Spirit that they may rest from their 
labors; and their works do follow them.’’—Revelation 


14: 13. 


WILLIAM THE SILENT 


WHAT a relief after several weeks spent 
among the majestic mountains and the deep 
fjords of Norway, to find one’s self one morning, 
steaming along in the train over the flat lands 
of Holland! If those northern people are 
rugged through their constant fight to wrest a 
living from the steep mountains and the short 
summers, here is a people who have fought for 
the very soil on which their houses rest. Smaller 
than the State of New Jersey, more than half of 
Holland lies beneath the level of the sea. The 
English Channel and the North Sea bearing 
down with terrific force, threaten every moment 
to inundate the little sea bordering land, while 
the Meuse and the Rhine Rivers would wash 
its surface into the sea. 

Sea-made sand dunes with grass on them, 
which it is a crime to pull, and man-made dykes 
make possible much of this little land of Hol- 
land. The dykes hold up the rivers and hold 
back the sea. Sometimes the sea is above the 
mouth of the river, then the dyke must hold back 
the sea. Sometimes the river is above the sea 
level, then gates must open to set it free lest its 
waters overflow into the fields. One rides in 
boats on the canals and looks down upon the 
farm-houses and upon the sleek cattle grazing 


in the rich pasture below. Windmills act as 
81 


82 STARS OF THE MORNING 


pumps and sentinels. Sometimes they pump the 
water from the fields to the canals, and in dry 
seasons from the canals to the fields. The dykes 
are monuments to the constant battle with the 
sea. The largest of these is not far from Am- 
sterdam,—seven miles in length; thirty. feet 
high, thirty feet across the top with a double 
line of rails for cars to carry material to keep 
the dykes in repair. Its sea-side slopes first at 
an angle of thirty degrees, then one foot in three 
of stone paving, then sod for a hundred feet, 
then over one hundred feet of stone paving out 
beyond low tide level. Three rows of pilings 
are driven in at this place to keep the stones 
from slipping. The cost is without computa- 
tion. The piling, it 1s said, costs four dollars 
each to put in place. One loosened stone, left 
unrepaired, may cause great loss in money and 
in human life. 

One traveller expressed wonder “how a 
Dutchman ever dares to sleep.” But fighting 
the elements has ever tended to develop great 
men, and Holland is no exception to this rule. 
Scientists, traders, philosophers, reformers have 
been nurtured in this sea-fighting country. 
Among these, stands in undimmed splendor, 
William the Silent, who though neither a 
Dutchman, nor silent, easily takes his place as 
the great hero of Holland. 

William the Silent was born in Dillenberg, 
April 25, 1533. He was the child of Count 
‘William of Nassau, and his second wife Juliana, 


WILLIAM THE SILENT 83 


widow of Count Philip of Hainault. House- 
keeping for a royal family in that day was on a 
large scale apparently, and not as carefully done 
as we might desire. One record tells of a 
slaughter of three hundred and eighty-two rats 
in the Dillenberg home. Five children of Juli- 
ana by her first husband shared the family for- 
tunes with on-coming brothers and sisters. Chil- 
dren also of lesser nobles came to the royal 
household to receive their polish, so that the cas- 
tle teemed with young life, of all sorts. 

When young William was eleven years old, 
his cousin Rene fell in battle, leaving by spe- 
cial permission of Emperor Charles V, his estate 
to young William. Thus William became 
“Prince of Orange.” One provision the Em- 
peror stipulated in consenting to the terms of 
the will was that young William should be 
brought up at his court. Accordingly, two 
months later, we find Count William, the fa- 
ther, taking Prince William, then in his twelfth 
year, to Brussels, September, 1544, where he 
leaves him in care of Charles V. Philip, the 
son of Charles, a lad a few years older than 
Prince William, was placed with the Prince 
under the tutor Granvelle, a young brother of 
Cardinal Granvelle. William proved himself 
an apt student and soon outdistanced Philip. 
He is said to have spoken with fluency, five lan- 
guages. 

Prince William must have found it very pleas- 
ant at the court, for with plenty of money and 


\ 


84. STARS OF THE MORNING 


pleasure, he had the added satisfaction of being 
the special favorite of the Emperor. 

At the age of eighteen he married ‘Anne of 
Egmont and set up housekeeping on a splendid, 
we would think, extravagant scale. At one time; 
we are told, in order to cut down expenses a 
little, he discharged twenty-eight cooks in one 
day. In the same year as his marriage he was 
made captain of two hundred royal horsemen 
and the next year he became commander of ten 
companies of infantry. 

At twenty-two he was placed in command of 
the Imperial Army on the French border. This 
period of his life, which must have appealed to 
the polished, ease-loving Prince, marked with 
the brilliancy of court life and activity in mili- 
tary engagements, came to an end on Friday, 
October 25, 1555, when William was twenty- 
two years of age. 

The occasion was Charles V’s voluntary ab- 
dication of the throne in favor of his son Philip. 
It was a theatrical spectacle carefully planned 
by Charles V and took place in Brussels. 

Thus Philip the Second becomes master of 
the Netherlands, and King of Spain. The Neth- 
erlands at that time consisted of seventeen proy- 
inces, and though so small a territory, could 
boast of three hundred and fifty cities alive with 
industry, besides many smaller towns. ‘These 
yielded in taxes a lucrative income. 

The Emperor advised his son Philip to main- 
tain Prince William as chief advisor. So Wil- 


WILLIAM THE SILENT 85 


liam finds himself the officer of a mean, narrow- 
souled, selfish despot, but a few years his senior, 
—a different position from his place of favor 
with the old Emperor. However, William 
proved himself diplomatic and loyal to his new 
master to an unusual degree. 

Among the heritages handed over to Philip 
by his father, was a war with France. <A peace 
was patched up in which William figures as a 
sort of hostage and ambassador in the court at 
Paris. Here he came in close touch with Henry 
II, King of France, and once while riding in the 
woods with Henry, William hears for the first 
time of a plot which Philip is contemplating— 
to establish the Inquisition in the Netherlands. 
Henry was unaware that William knew noth- 
ing of this diabolical plan and with great en- 
thusiasm talked of Philip’s proposed Inquisi- 
tion in the Netherlands. William heard him 
through without comment and on this account 
he received the name of the “Taciturn,’ the 
“Silent,” which somehow has clung to him. 

William had been reared a Catholic and had 
remained Catholic, though religion up to this 
time had not figured largely with him, but when 
he thought of his freedom-loving Hollanders 
being put under the thumb of the Inquisition, 
he longed to get back to Holland, as he said 
“to chase those Spanish vermin from the land.” 

Soon we find him in Brussels again. Mean- 
while tired of living in the quiet Netherlands, 
where he could not speak the language of the 


86 STARS OF THE MORNING 


land, and longing for the license of Spain, 
Philip goes back to Spain, leaving in his place 
his half-sister, Margaret. Margaret is pictured 
as a woman who looked like a man dressed in 
woman’s clothes; who could follow the chase 
all day without tiring, and who politically could 
steer many ways. Her one passion was love for 
her brother Philip and desire to carry out his 
wishes. William now found himself, with 
Count Egmont, counsellor to Margaret. 

It was not an easy position. More and more 
his interest was drawn to the cause of Protes- 
tantism. Egmont was a loyal Catholic and a 
firm believer in Philip, though he loved his fel- 
low Hollanders. William knew the treacher- 
ous soul of Philip, though he tried to be loyal 
to him. Then came the news that the Duke of 
Alva was coming to Holland to set up the In- 
quisition. Even Margaret trembled, and Wil- 
liam withdrew to Dillenberg to prepare for the 
break he knew must come. 

One thing can be said for the Inquisition, it 
was thorough. Three archbishops were ap- 
pointed over each province. Under these were 
seventeen bishops, and under these nine officers 
to carry out their will. The soldiers were to be 
the heresy hunters. The method was torture to 
make confess, and further torture to death to rid 
the land of heresy. Alva was the man for the 
task if ever there was one. He had had experi- 
ence in Italy and had gained the name “Bloody” 
Alva. During seven years in Holland, he is re- 


WILLIAM THE SILENT 87 


ported to have slain eighteen thousand six hun- 
dred victims, besides the carnage in battle, and 
he explained his failure to subdue the indomi- 
table Hollanders on the ground that his rule 
had been too merciful. 

It is a brave story of resistance during those 
_ years, under William and his brother Louis, who 
sacrificed their ease and private fortunes and 
lived as wanderers and exiles for the cause of 
toleration. 

Terrible the tale of the slaughter of the peo- 
ple of Haarlem! Brave the resistance for seven 
months of the low-lying Alkmaar! But most 
thrilling the holding for one hundred and thirty- 
one days, of the town of Leyden. Starving, the 
inhabitants appealed to the burgomaster, “‘had 
they not better surrender?” ‘Tall, haggard, hun- 
gry, he stands before them. ‘I have made an 
oath to keep the city. I can die but once—I 
know I shall starve if not soon relieved; but 
starvation is preferable to the dishonorable death 
which is the only alternative-—Here is my 
sword. Plunge it into my breast!—Take my 
body and appease your hunger, but expect no 
surrender so long as I remain alive.” 

A worthy example for modern officials! 

A carrier pigeon brings a message from Wil- 
liam,—‘“‘Hold the city! I shall come.” But 
now William lies sick almost unto death with 
fever. Tidings of the closing in of the Span- 
iards on Leyden reaches him. ‘Then with mirac- 
ulous effort he rises. He gives orders to break 


88 STARS OF THE MORNING 


the dykes. And the sea which they had held 
back, is now called in to be their ally. In come 
the raging waters from the sea fifteen miles 
away upon the terrified Spaniards, and on the 
crests of the waves ride “the Beggars of the Sea,” 
finishing the work that the sea left undone. The 
fortress of Alva is destroyed and his power 
broken. Inthe Church at Leyden, thin, starved, 
exhausted, the grateful citizens bow in reverence 
and thanksgiving for so great deliverance; while 
the sea having served them so well, as though 
obedient to its masters, rolled back, driven by a 
sirong wind, until within four days, the land 
was free again from its embrace, and the dykes 
were being reconstructed. 

The power of Philip in the Netherlands was 
no more. The Dutch Republic is formed on 
the principle of freedom of worship and liberty 
from foreign aggression. 

William is hailed as the Saviour of the Neth- 
erlands. “Father William,” they lovingly called 
him. He could have been the despot, but he 
chose only to guide the land of his adoption to 
safety as a Republic. 

The hands of assassins had been busy, but with 
no success. He now retired to an old convent in 
Delft, which had been given to him, that from 
this quiet sheltered place he might direct the af- 
fairs of state. No more the extravagance of the 
former days. He had given his all for the cause 
of freedom and in the process found freedom for 
his own soul. 


WILLIAM THE SILENT 89 


Then on July 10, 1584, when the Prince was 
fifty-one years of age, in the prime of life, Wil- 
liam the Silent falls by the hand of a fanatic. 
A little ugly Spaniard named Balthazar Gerard, 
with the knowledge and sanction of the Church 
and State, undertook the task of taking the life 
of Spain’s great enemy. Believing himself to be 
doing a notable service, he sought admittance to 
the Prince. He asked and received alms from 
William. With this very money he bought a 
pistol and as William came down the steps of 
his home from the dining room, Gerard stepped 
out of a dark recess in the hall and fired into 
William’s breast, killing him almost instantly. 
The murderer was caught and executed, but 
Holland lost her great champion and leader. 

The Prince’s sister asked him as he was dying; 
—Ts your soul trusting to Jesus Christ?” The 
great soldier and statesman answered “Yes.” So 
in that assurance, the mighty leader can, as the 
humblest follower may, pass through the dark 
valley fearing no evil for “Thou art with me.” 

The body of the Prince lay in state until Au- 
gust 3rd, when a long procession accompanied 
it to the burying ground in Delft. A brief ser- 
mon was delivered on the appropriate text,— 
“Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord 
from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they 
may rest from their labors; and their works do 
follow them.” 

One writer thus sums up the work of William 
the Silent: 


go STARS OF THE MORNING 


“With the death of William the Silent, the 
Netherlands lost their noblest hero, their most 
sublime patriot, and one of the greatest leaders 
of all time. Few are the names that are worthy to 
be ranked with that of this Prince of the blood, 
who gave his wealth, his strength and finally his 
life for the cause of liberty. Ruling with a 
strong hand, he was not a despot; brave, he was 
not reckless; giant, he was also gentle; warring 
against the Inquisition with its thumbscrews and 
faggots, he held himself back from bloodthirsti- 
ness and revenge. The victim of every kind of 
attack that hate could devise or malignity in- 
vent, he never degraded himself by meeting hate 
with hate or crime with crime. When the long 
struggle for liberty which he began was brought 
to an issue, Spain had buried three hundred and 
fifty thousand of her sons and allies in Holland, 
spent untold millions for the destroying of free- 
dom, and sank from the ranks of the first power 
in Europe to the level of a fourth-rate country— 
stagnant in ideas, cruel in government, supersti- 
tious in religion. But brave little Holland had 
emerged to serve forever as a rock against 
tyranny and a refuge from oppression.” 

Why call him the “Morning Star of Tolera- 
tion?” | 

In a day when people believed in the divine 
right of Kings, William living with the vulgar 
Philip came to doubt its truth, and felt the right 
of the common man to self-direction. Reared a 
Catholic, he saw the treachery of such men as 


WILLIAM THE SILENT gI 


Cardinal Granvelle, and the bitter wrongs of 
the Inquisition, and taking his place with the 
Protestants he made the way for tolerance in re- 
ligion. 

William the Silent, cultured, rich, a prince of 
royal blood, sacrificed everything he formally 
had held dear, that he might bring in a new 
day of freedom, and there was born in his little 
country a shelter for the oppressed. Hither 
Spinoza, the philosopher, fled that he might pur- 
sue his philosophy unmolested. In this place 
Erasmus found refuge from persecution, while 
he wrote his religious theses. To the little land 
of Holland our Pilgrim fathers fled for refuge 
from English oppression, and the little Baptist 
Church in London sought rest and peace in 
Amsterdam, because William the Silent, genial, 
charming, sympathetic, loving, endured hard- 
ness as a good soldier. 

If Dante dared couch in common language 
his high thoughts, in the Divine Comedy; if 
Wycliffe risked to the common tongue, the Holy 
Book; if Huss ventured to preach the Gospel 
of Christ in the vernacular; if Savonarola cham- 
pioned integrity of conviction as a right for all, 
William the Silent takes his place among these 
Stars of the Coming Day by ushering into being 
a country where tolerance took the place of 
despotism, and paved the way for the republics 
of the tomorrow. 

In the Hague, which has figured so largely 
in recent peace negotiations, there is the Square 


92 STARS OF THE MORNING 


of the Binnenhof. Here is a tablet on which 
are the words of William the Silent, that formed 
the challenge of the Dutch Republic;—“We de- 
clare to you that you have no right to interfere 
with the conscience of any one so long as he has 
done nothing to work injury to another person 
or public scandal.” 

May this Star of the Morning, William the 
Silent, light the present soft generation to a 
truer, more self-sacrificing devotion in main- 
taining those principles of freedom for which 
this Prince in blood and soul sacrificed his all! 


THE MORNING STAR OF ENGLISH 
LITERATURE 


WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 
ENGLAND 
(1564-1616) 


“There are three great ranges of production in which 
Shakespeare’s imagination stands supreme. As a creator, 
first of character, second of imagery, and third of diction, 
he is the greatest of the sons of men.” 

Augustus H. Strong. 


“By thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words 
thou shalt be condemned.’”—Matthew 12: 37. 


SHAKESPEARE 


IF you will take the train with me at St. Pan- 
cras Station, London, and ride for ninety miles 
through the deep green fields and little towns to 
Leamington; then sit with me in the commodius 
bus that awaits the train, we shall ride together 
through Warwickshire amid some of England’s 
most beautiful scenery, a beauty enhanced with 
memories of Shakespeare. A contemporary of 
Shakespeare, one Michael Drayton called this 
“the heart of England.” ‘The town of Stratford 
in which Shakespeare was born rests on the 
Avon. It numbered then some fourteen hun- 
dred inhabitants and consisted of scattered tim- 
ber houses, the church, and the guildhall, where 
traveling players performed at irregular inter- 
vals. The town today is somewhat larger, but 
you may still see the low-ceiled rambling house 
on Henley Street where William Shakespeare 
was born in April, 1564. You may even sit in 
his chair, if that be any inspiration. 

John, the father of William Shakespeare, was 
a prosperous and important person. He has 
been called a farmer, a butcher, a glove-maker, 
a wool merchant. He probably was all of these, 
in a day when a man could successfully be more 
than one thing. 

Mary Arden, William’s mother, belonged to 

95 


96 STARS OF THE MORNING 


the Warwickshire gentry, who traced their fam- 
ily back to the Norman conquest. She had prop- 
erty in her own right and the house into which 
William was born was comfortable and de- 
sirable. Of the eight children born to them, 
three died in infancy. Wiailliam was the oldest 
surviving one in the home. 

You may still see in Stratford the Free Gram- 
mar School, where young Shakespeare received 
his first instruction. ‘This school he attended 
from about his seventh to thirteenth year. The 
school hours were long, but there were some 
holidays. On these gala days there were charm- 
ing rambles. Warwick and Kenilworth Castles 
were not far away. That the boy was familiar 
with these and the country ’round, is evidenced 
in his plays. 

We remember going through the Kenil- 
worth grounds where the castle stands resplen- 
dent in its ruins, and listening enchanted to an 
old self-appointed guide, who transformed for 
us the peaceful hills into a gala scene, with lake 
on which floated royal barges, as pictured in 
Elizabethan times in “A Midsummer Night’s 
Dream.” 

Days of absorbing knowledge in school and 
out, were these six or seven years of the school 
days of the dramatist. 

“Then came a change, as all things human 
change.” 

The boy was taken from school. The father’s 
fortunes are reversed. He withdraws from the 


SHAKESPEARE 97 


public life of the town. Wiailliam is sent to work. 
At whate No one knows. A number of guesses 
have been made, but the years lie in obscurity, 
from a day when records were not accurately 
kept. No one knew a genius was among them, 
so why be particular about keeping a record of 
hime : 

We do know however that often he took the 
charming path that still leads to Shottery, where 
the traveler may enter to-day the low rambling 
cottage with its quaint old-fashioned garden. 
Here lived in those other days Anne Hathaway. 
The result of these visits was the marriage in 
November, 1582, of William, aged eighteen, to 
Anne, aged twenty-six. 

Also, we know, though he was married, he en- 
gaged in some of the frolics of youth and that 
one of these had to do with poaching deer in 
Sir Thomas Lucy’s preserves at Charlcote near 
Stratford. Sir Lucy objected, and about this 
time William leaves his wife and three chil- 
dren and goes to London. He is now twenty- 
two years old. 

We can picture him riding horseback toward 
London. It was before coaches made regular 
trips to the Metropolis. Roads were poor and 
robbers were plentiful. What thoughts were in 
his mind as he thought back to Stratford, Shot- 
tery, Charlcote, the days that lay behind, and 
forward to London and the players he had seen 
and with whom even now he was probably trav- 
eling? 


98 STARS OF THE MORNING 


That he did think of these is proved by the 
fact that we find him employed at once in that 
connection. Some say that he held the horses for 
the gentlemen who stopped to see the plays. 

London then numbered about one hundred 
and fifty thousand. Even at that time the Tower 
loomed above the Thames, and old St. Paul’s 
lifted its gilded dome. The streets were narrow, 
crooked, unsanitary and often dangerous; dusty: 
in summer, muddy in winter. ‘The theatres were 
crude affairs. ‘The stage was covered; the pit 
was open. The plays were given in the after- 
noon. When it rained, the audience got wet. 
When the sun shone, the audience steamed. All 
the actors were men. The women’s parts were 
taken by youths. Greene writes,—‘‘Rude as the 
theatre might be, all the world was there. The 
stage was crowded with nobles and courtiers. 
Apprentices and citizens thronged the benches 
in the yard below.” ‘Thus the theatre became 
a place of great influence in expressing and 
shaping public opinion. On this rising tide of 
favor, Shakespeare cast in his lot with the 
players. 

The London career of Shakespeare, which 
was also the time of his literary productiveness, 
centers in the year 1600, and is happily divided 
by Professor Edward Dowden into four five- 
year periods. 


SHAKESPEARE 99 


First Period:—In the Workshop. 1590-1595 


During this period, we find Shakespeare grad- 
ually rising from penniless obscurity to a place 
among the players? He takes old plays and 
touches them up, here and there. But even these 
few touches brighten up the older works to such 
degree, that he early wins the jealousy of fellow 
playwrights. ‘This is seen in words that have 
come down to us from Robert Green, a noted 
player of that day, who when very sick wrote to 
his fellow players, “There is an upstart crow, 
beautified with our feathers, that . . . supposes 
he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse, 
asitne Destof you. .1. being... in his,owne 
conceit the only Shake-scene in a countrie.” So 
always jealousy pounces upon rising success. 


Second Period:—In the World. 1595-1600 


During this period Shakespeare observes life 
as it is and endeavors to make his words and 
characters really living things. He begins to 
break away from the old traditional, stilted 
style. His genius gradually manifests itself in 
the vividness of his words. During this period 
he wrote his historical plays. From the villain- 
ous King Richard III, the worked-over play of 
the first period, he advances to kingly kings as 
in Henry IV and V. In this period also, his 
grasp of human life is seen in the “Merchant 
of Venice.” He makes Shylock a real, living, 
grasping man. 


IOO STARS OF THE MORNING 


Third Period:—“Out of the Depths.” 
1000-1005 


Sorrow and disappointments common to the 
growing life, have come into his experience. 
His father and his only son have died. A 
trusted friend had done him some injury. He 
leaves the tales of mirth and of history and now 
enters the depths of human tragedy. Here 
again he makes words living things. Now ap- 
peat the tragedies) Fiamlet,”’ “Lear,” \ Vides 
beth,” “Coriolanus,” “Othello,” “Antony and 
Cleopatra,” called “the six greatest tragedies of 
the world.” Even the comedies of this period 
are touched with depths of feeling not found 
in the earlier plays;—‘‘Measure for Measure,” 
“Alls Well That Ends Well.” 


Fourth Period:—“‘On the Heights.” 
1005-1010 


He is now a little past forty. Prosperity has 
come. He has purchased rather large and valu- 
able properties in Stratford, and around it. He 
has investments, which bring him large returns. 
His spirits seem, too, to be revived. It is as 
one writer calls it, “The Indian Summer” of the 
poet’s days. ‘Cymbeline,” “The Winter’s Tale” 
and “The Tempest” with their stories of wrongs 
righted, of repentance from transgression, of 
sunny and large-minded charity, are the fruit of 
these later years of Shakespeare. 


SHAKESPEARE IOI 


Dowden says,—‘‘The spirit of these last plays 
is that of serenity which results from fortitude, 
and the recognition of human frailty; all of 
them express a deep sense of the need of re- 
pentance and the duty of forgiveness.” 

In these spirits, at the age of forty-seven, he 
returns from London life in 1611, the same year 
that the King James version of our Bible is 
given to the world. We find him back with his 
wife and two daughters in Stratford. Elizabeth 
had married three years before, and four years 
later Judith the other daughter married. Here, 
among his own, he lived a happy, contented, 
prosperous life, taking part in the town affairs 
and enjoying the old fellowships; going, now 
and then, down to London to renew friendships 
and business relations there. 

But we are reminded that times then were 
not as good as now by the fact that suddenly he 
contracted fever due to the unsanitary condi- 
tions, though others say, due to revelry with 
some visiting friends from London, and on Tues- 
day, April 23, 1616, at the age of fifty-two the 
poet died. He was buried inside the chancel 
of the Holy Trinity Church at Stratford. There 
the traveler may read the strange lines, he him- 
self wrote for this resting place,— 


“Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare 
To dig the dust enclosed heare; 
Bleste be the man that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones.” 


102 STARS OF THE MORNING 


On the monument erected to him in the church 
is this quotation,— 


“Tn judgment a Nestor, in intellect a Socrates, 
in rhetoric a Virgil. 
Earth covers him, the world mourns him, 
Heaven possesses him.” 


‘And what sort of man was he? Genial to his 
friends, careful for his father, mother and fam- 
ily, he lived an upright life in a coarse age. 
His career was an unfolding one, from the com- 
mon frivolities of youth, through the depths of 
experience, to the sunny hills of success and con- 
tentment. 

Why call him the Morning Star of English 
literature? Dr. Augustus H. Strong calls him 
“the greatest augmenter of our language. Miail- 
ton with all his adaptations from the Greek and 
the Latin, uses but eight thousand words, 
Shakespeare cannot content himself with less 
than fifteen thousand. Hundreds of these are 
of his own coinage, or are preserved to our 
literature only by his uce of them.” 

But Shakespeare was not a mere maker of 
words. Words to him were actualities. ‘The 
Greek name for “word” and “thing” is the same, 
—‘‘rhema.” Shakespeare maintained this mean- 
ing in reality. To him words were real things. 
He made words live. He put words together, 
and lo there stands before us a living man, a 
breathing woman. Like the bones of Ezekiel’s 


SHAKESPEARE 103 


vision which were exceeding many and exceed- 
ing dry, Shakespeare takes the dead bones of 
the scholastic literature and breathes into them, 
and lo they become a mighty, living army! 

What vividness he gives to the word “szn, 
for example! 

See how in Macbeth he presents the innocent- 
appearing allurement of sin,— 


3d 


| “Tis strange: 
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, 
‘The instruments of darkness tell us truths, 
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us 

In deepest consequence.” 


Could there be a more vivid or pathetic por- 
trayal of the awful sense of guilt in sin than in 
this same play where Lady Macbeth in the dead 
of night walks in her sleep? | 


‘“Flere’s the smell of the blood still: all the per- 
fumes of Arabia will not sweeten this lit- 
tle hand. Oh, oh, oh!” 


In this play, too, is portrayed the self-breed- 
ing power of sin,—Macbeth soliloquizes on the 
proposed murder of Duncan,— 


“But in these cases 
We still have judgment here; that we but teach 
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice 


104, STARS OF THE MORNING 


Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chal- 
ice 
To our own lips.” 


‘This same emphasis on the sure consequences of 
sin, 1f not here, hereafter, is presented in those 
expressive words of Hamlet,— 


“Tn the corrupted currents of this world 
Offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice; 
But ’tis not so above. J'here is no shuffling; 
There the action lies in his true nature, and 
we ourselves 

Compelled, even to the teeth and forehead of 
our faults, 

To give in evidence.” 


Sin is an ugly word for an ugly thing and 
Shakespeare always paints it so. He never 
makes it successful or attractive. 

He not only pictures vividly the gruesomeness 
of sin, but he points the way out. 


“Refrain to-night; 
And that shall lend a kind of easiness 
To the next abstinence; the next more easy; 
For use can almost change the stamp of nature, 
And either master the devil, or throw him out 
With wondrous potency.” 


But sin once committed has only one remedy 
and this is graphically presented in the scene in 
Lady Macbeth’s chamber where the maid-in- 


SHAKESPEARE 105 


waiting, and the Queen’s physician await to ob- 
serve Lady Macbeth’s strange sleep-walking and 
talking. After listening to her mutterings about 
blood, the doctor says,— 


“Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds 
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds 
To their deaf pillows will discharge their se- 

crets: 
More needs she the divine than the physician. 
God, God forgive us all!” 


You may take any of the great words of our lan- 
guage and follow their use through Shakespeare, 
and you will find that word standing out in en- 
larged and vivid richness. Take another exam- 
ple, the famous speech of Portia, as she balances 
justice and mercy over against each other in her 
plea against Shylock,— 


“The quality of mercy is not strained; 
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
Upon the place beneath; it is twice bless’d, 
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 
"Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes 
The throned monarch better than his crown; 
His sceptre shows the force of temporal 
power,— 
But mercy is above this sceptred sway. 
Therefore, Jew, 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,— 
That, in the course of justice, none of us 
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy, 


106 STARS OF THE MORNING 


And that same power doth teach us all to 
render 
The deeds of mercy.” 


How the word “ingratitude” takes on its bitter 
meaning under the magic wand of Shakespeare. 


In “As You Like It,”— 


“Blow, blow, thou winter wind, 
Thou art not so unkind 

As man’s ingratitude; 

Thy tooth is not so keen.” 


And in that familiar passage, familiar because 
it is so vivid a presentation of the meaning of 
ingratitude, where holding the murdered Cezs- 
ar’s garment, bloody from the stabs of many 
daggers, Antony says,— 


“Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabb’d; 
And as he pluck’d his cursed steel away, 
Mark how the blood of Cesar followed it, 
As rushing out of doors, to be resolved 
If Brutus so unkindly knock’d, or no; 

For Brutus, as you know, was Cesar’s angel. 

Judge, O ye gods, how dearly Cesar loved 
him! 

This was the most unkindest cut of all; 

For when the noble Cesar saw him stab, 

Ingratitude, more strong than traitor’s arms, 

Quite vanquish’d him: then burst his mighty 
heart, 

And in his mantle muffling up his face, 


SHAKESPEARE 107 


Even at the base of Pompey’s statue, 
Which all the while ran blood, great Cesar 
fell.” 


Not only does Shakespeare make words live, but 
he shows us the very working of men’s minds 
and thoughts. While other writers give us the 
story of outward acts of heroes and heroines, 
Shakespeare bids us look within. This may be 
seen in such passages as the soliloquy of Lady 
Macbeth previously quoted, or in that of Ham- 
let as he contemplates whether to flee the ills of 
this life by suicide, or fight the battle to the 
end. 


‘To be, or not to be: that is the question: 
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer 
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
And by opposing end them. ‘To die: to sleep; 


To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the 
rub; 

For in that sleep of death what dreams may 
come, 

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 

Must give us pause.” 


Here we see the mind of Hamlet balancing the 
age-old scales of endurance or surrender to the 
ills common to us all. 

Dante leads his readers through the corridors 
of the future, into Hell and Purgatory and at 


108 STARS OF THE MORNING 


last to God Himself. Shakespeare bids us live 
with real people here and now, and see them as 
they are. He is not original in his plots; but he 
causes the old plots and characters to take on 
real life under his touch. In this vital respect, 
he is the morning star of modern English litera- 
ture. 

In an age when crudeness and illiteracy rested 
like a black mantle on society as a whole; when 
those who did write or speak, did so in the 
stilted, lifeless language of the past, William 
Shakespeare breathed into his words a living 
soul. His light like the stars of the morning 
has guided the way to a finer use of words and 
a fuller expression of thought through the me- 
dium of language. 

‘“Shakespeare’s genius,’ says Hamilton 
Wright Mabie, “shining on the darkest ways, 
seems to touch the sky beyond the horizon with 
light.” 

If the Master’s statement be accepted,—“By 
thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy 
words thou shalt be condemned,” and words do 
have so vital a place in our living, then we owe 
no small debt to William Shakespeare, who so 
enriched the meaning of words and easily takes 
his place as the Morning Star of English Litera- 
ture. 


THE MORNING STAR OF MODERN 
STATESMANSHIP 


JOHN MILTON 
ENGLAND 
(1608-1674) 


“Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart; 
Thou hadst a voice that sounded like the sea; 
Pure as the native heavens, majestic, free. 
We must be free or die that speak the tongue 
That Shakespeare spoke; the faith and morals hold 
Which Milton held.” 
W ordsworth. 


““‘Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are hon- 
est, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report . . . think on these things!’’—Philippians 4: 8. 


MILTON 


BREAD STREET is a narrow short thoroughfare 
running off from Cheapside. One of the pleas- 
ant things in London is to step from a busy busi- 
ness street into this quiet little lane and see the 
place where once stood the house in which John 
Milton was born. 

Shakespeare had reached the zenith of his 
popularity and was now living in Stratford. It 
is quite possible that the little boy Milton saw 
the great dramatist in one of his visits to Lon- 
don, for Shakespeare died in 1616, and Milton 
was born on December gth, 1608. 

The life of Milton divides easily into three 
periods;—The Preparatory, the Political and 
the Poetical. 

The Preparatory Period reaches from his 
birth in 1608 to the end of his foreign travels 
in 1640. , 

The Political Period is synchronous with the 
Commonwealth, 1640-1660. 

The Poetical Period extends from 1660 to his 
death in 1674. 

John Milton’s father came from Oxfordshire, 
and was the son of an ardent Catholic, but the 
older John Milton rebelled against his father’s 
faith and became a Presbyterian. He was a 
scrivener, a sort of real estate man; also a cul- 


tured gentleman and a lover of music. Young 
Tit 


112 STARS OF THE MORNING 


John was given the best education available in 
St. Paul’s school where he was taught the lan- 
guages, Latin, Greek, French, Hebrew and lit- 
erature. 

At about sixteen or seventeen, he entered 
Christ’s College, Cambridge, and was recog- 
nized at once as an earnest student. He says of 
-himself that he had seldom gone to bed before 
midnight from the age of twelve. His college 
career was marked by study and independence 
of thought. By the undergraduates he was nick- 
named ‘“The Lady of Christ’s.’ This nickname | 
he owed to his fair complexion, light hair, per- 
sonal beauty and also to the delicacy of his per- 
sonal habits of refinement, purity of mind and 
bodily cleanliness, traits which were not com- 
mon, in a crude age when manhood was meas- 
ured by capacity for ale, and baths were none 
too frequent an experience. He was never, 
however, charged with cowardice, though he 

was called the “Lady.” 

' He seems from the beginning of his career to 
have read in his life a divine purpose and to 
have kept himself set apart to fulfil that pur- 
pose. All the more does the singular purity and 
loftiness of his life stand out in an age when 
purity was not so general. Be it said to the 
credit of the students, that though they did not 
always practice his virtues, they had grace 
enough to admire him because of them. It is 
said that “he was loved and admired by the | 
whole community.” He must even by the time 


MILTON 113 


of his graduation have been known as something 
of a poet for he had written “On the Death of 
a Fair Infant,” “Ode on the Nativity,” “Song on 
May Morning,” and the now famous lines to 
Shakespeare, and many other stanzas. 

Read the “Ode on the Nativity” and you will 
see already apparent that quality which caused 
Wordsworth to call Milton the ‘“sweet-toned 
organ voice of England.” 


‘This is the month, and this the happy morn, 
Wherein the Son of Heaven’s eternal King, 
Of wedded maid, and virgin mother born, 
Our great redemption from above did bring; 
For so the holy sages once did sing, 

That he our deadly forfeit should release, 
And with his Father work us a perpetual 
peace. 


That glorious form, that light unsufferable, 

And that far-beaming blaze of majesty 

Wherewith he wont at Heaven’s high council- 
table 

To sit the midst of Trinal Unity, 

He laid aside; and here with us to be, 

Forsook the courts of everlasting day, 

And chose with us the darksome house of 
mortal clay.” 


His folks had intended him for the church, but 
the free mind of Milton could not bring itself 
to submission in things of conscience to such a 
man as Laud who then governed the church pol- 
icy. Soon leaving college at the age of twenty- 


114. STARS OF THE MORNING 


three he returned to his father’s home. His 
father had so prospered that he now lived in re- 
tirement at Buckinghamshire. Here in Horton, 
not far removed from London, Milton enjoyed 
to the full that music and high company he so 
much loved. 

It is to the everlasting credit of his father that 
he understood his*noble son and allowed him to 
have unfettered the next few years in preparing 
for the work he felt he was called to do. 

During these six years at home, Milton gave 
himself to the earnest study of the Greek and 
Latin masters. Also during this time he wrote 
poems which if he had not written any other 
would have placed him among the foremost 
poets of the world. Among these are “L’AI- 
legro,” the cheerful man, and its opposite, “Il 
Penseroso,” the thoughtful, serious man; the 
masque,—‘‘Comus,” “Lycidas,” a pastoral elegy 
in memory of a college friend who had drowned, 
in which occur these beautiful lines,— 


“Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no 
more, 
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, 
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 
And tricks his beams, and with new- -spangled 
ore 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky: 
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, 
Through the dear might of him that walked 
the waves.’ 


MILTON 116 


When Milton was thirty years old, his father 
gave him money to travel. So he leaves home 
for Continental Europe. Of this time he writes 
to his friend Diodati, ‘“You ask what I am about, 
what I am thinking of, why with God’s help, 
immortality.” This was not a mere thoughtless 
tour. He was preparing for immortal work. 
So the last stage of the preparatory period is 
taken up with foreign travel. He is attended by 
_ a servant and travels in comfort,—a few days in 
Paris, two months in Florence. What days they 
must have been in this city of Dante and Savona- 
rola! He was entertained by the literary clubs 
which then flourished there. And not the least 
must he have been impressed by his visit to the 
blind old Galileo who was a nominal prisoner 
of the Inquisition, for daring to think scientifi- 
cally, rather than ecclesiastically. How he must 
have remembered that visit in later life when 
the blind poet looked back to the blind scientist, 
both frowned upon by the bigoted religionists! 

From Florence, Milton went to Rome for two 
months; then on to Naples. He had intended 
going to Greece, but hearing of the political 
convulsion of his own country, he felt he had 
no right to go traveling while his own land 
needed him. So we find him back home by Au- 
gust, 1639, having been away about fifteen 
months. The period of preparation is now over; 
and Milton enters on the second period of his 
life, Ats political career. 

He did not return to his father’s house, but 


116 STARS OF THE MORNING 


settled in London with a young nephew whom 
he undertook to educate. He now began casting 
about in earnest for a suitable subject for the 
poem he contemplated writing. ‘Iwo things in- 
terfered with the writing, however, one of which 
was to postpone the poem for twenty years. 

The one was his marriage, the other was his 
entrance into the political arena. In the Spring 
of 1643 he went to Oxfordshire to try to collect 
a debt of five hundred pounds owed to his fa- 
ther by a family named Powell. Milton at this 
time was thirty-five years old. The Springtime 
and a beautiful young country girl of seventeen © 
had their effect, for to the surprise of his friends, 
Milton comes back married and incidentally 
without the five hundred pounds. The girl had 
probably not counted the cost, and when she 
found herself in the stifling atmosphere of Lon- 
don instead of the fragrant fields of Oxfordshire, 
and in the rigid atmosphere of the mighty Mil- 
ton, instead of in her accustomed easy-going 
method of living, she contrived a visit home, 
which she prolonged for two years. Milton 
wrote asking her to return, but it was not until 
two years later that she returned and on her 
knees asked to be taken back. 


“Soon his heart relented, 
Towards her, his life so late, and sole delight, 
Now at his feet submissive in distress.” 


She bore him three daughters and died in 1653. 
Three years later he married again but this wife 


MILTON 117 


lived less than a year, and in 1663 he married 
again. 

During this period from 1640 to 1660 he en- 
gaged in teaching and in political service. 

Macaulay calls this one of the most mem- 
orable eras in the history of mankind, “at the 
very crisis of the great conflict between liberty 
and despotism, reason and prejudice. The gov- 
ernment had just ability enough to deceive, and 
just religion enough to persecute.” It wasa time 
when evil kings ruled by what they attested as 
divine right, and vile priests held sway by apos- 
tolic succession; both absurd and evil-produc- 
ing claims. It would not be difficult to surmise 
the part a man of Milton’s spirit and courage 
would take in such a politico-religious struggle. 
He stood without fear, for freedom of conscience 
and of citizenship. He became the great liter- 
ary champion of liberty. 

It was a bitter time and bitter measures were 
used. Charles I was beheaded January 3oth, 
1649, and the act having been done, Milton un- 
dertook to prove its lawfulness in a tract en- 
titled, — 


“The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates 
Proving that it is lawful 
To call to account a tyrant or wicked king 
And, after due conviction, to depose and put 
him to death. 
by John Milton.” 


The publication of this tract immediately 


118 STARS OF THE MORNING 


made him famous. It is said that foreigners 
visiting England desired to see two men above 
all others, Oliver Cromwell and John Milton. 
For the next eleven years, Milton was “‘Secretary 
for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State.” 

During this period he wrote many pamphlets 
on social, religious and political issues, which 
greatly influenced public opinion. Among these 
is the one on “Divorce” written immediately 
after his young wife had left him to go back to 
her home. This is a very one-sided treatment of 
the matter and would give all the advantage to 
the man. His tract, ‘““Areopagitica,” is a strong 
plea for the right to print books without Goy- 
ernment license. At the very end of this period 
when Charles II was about to be crowned and 
the commonwealth abolished, Milton is still 
busy writing against kings. Under these condi- 
tions, he published a tract entitled “A Ready 
and Easy Way to Establish a Free Common- 
wealth.” 

The religious and political were so inter- 
woven in the state affairs that a person could not 
engage in one and keep free from the other. 
Milton was an independent in both. He would 
abolish kings. He also would abolish “Princes 
of the Church.” Having sided with the Pres- 
byterians against the Church of England, he 
finds that when they attained power “The New 
Presbyter is but Pope writ large,” and he turns 
from them and becomes a Puritan, “who pros- 
trated themselves before their Maker; but set 


MILTON 119 


their feet on the neck of the king.” He finally 
turns from these also, and affiliates himself with 
no religious body. This was probably partly 
due to his blindness and the difficulty of going 
when and as he pleased. 

His indefatigable labor for the state and his 
previous studious life began to tell on his sight 
early in this period of his career. When Sal- 
masius, a scholar renowned in all the courts of 
Europe, issued his pamphlet defending Charles 
I and the monarchy, the Council of State asked 
Milton as the only man in Salmasius’ class to 
prepare a reply. This required much work by 
the dim light of uncertain candles. Milton’s 
left eye was almost useless. Physicians coun- 
seled him to rest, lest total blindness ensue. 
With the alternatives before him of blindness or 
desertion of what he felt to be his duty, his 
choice was decisive. 

“Urged,” he said, “by the heavenly Counselor 
who dwells in conscience, I would have shut 
my ears to A‘sculapius himself.” He finished 
his reply and he lost his sight. So great is the 
price they pay, who lead the way to liberty. 

Blind, he sings of light and prays for inward 
light to help compensate for outer darkness. 


“Fail, holy light, offspring of Heaven’s first- 
born! 
Seasons return; but not to me returns 
Day or the sweet approach of even or morn, 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer rose, 


120 STARS OF THE MORNING 


Or flocks, or herbs, or human face divine; 
But cloud instead and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me, 
So much the rather thou, Celestial Light, 
Shine inward!” 





His compensation for this terrible calamity of 
blindness he tells in his poem to Cyriak Skinner, 
an old college friend,— 


“T argue not 
Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot 
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer 
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou 
aske 
The conscience, friend, to have lost them over- 
plied 
In Liberty’s defence, my noble task, 
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.” 


That John Milton, the unrepentant advocate of 
democracy escaped martyrdom on the accession 
of Charles II, seems almost a miracle. It is to 
the credit of those in authority and a tribute to 
the strength and loyalty of some unknown 
friends, but perhaps most of all to the overrul- 
ing Providence, that he was spared to do that 
work for which he is best known. 

So the third period “The Poetical Period,” 
extending from the Restoration in 1660 to his 
death in 1674, presents Milton, blind, bereft of 
friends, with daughters unsympathetic, com- 
paratively poor, and with ailments common to 
advancing age. 


MILTON P21 


Macaulay thus pictures him, ‘‘Milton was like 
Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, 
he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. 
He had survived his health and his sight, the 
comforts of his home, and the prosperity of his 
party. Of the great men by whom he had been 
distinguished at his entrance into life, some had 
been taken away from the evil to come; some 
had carried into foreign climates their uncon- 
querable hatred of oppression; some were pining 
in dungeons; and some had poured forth their 
blood on scaffolds. Venal and licentious scrib- 
blers, with just sufficient talent to clothe the 
thoughts of a pandar in the style of a bellman, 
were now the favorite writers of the Sovereign 
and of the public. It was a loathsome herd, 
which could be compared to nothing so fitly as 
to the rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half 
bestial, half human, dropping with wine, bloated 
with gluttony, and reeling in obscene dances. 
Amid these that fair Muse was placed, like the 
chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and 
serene, to be chattered at, and pointed at, and 
grinned at, by the whole rout of Satyrs and Gob- 
lins. If any despondency and asperity could be 
excused in any man, they might have been ex- 
cused in Milton. But the strength of his mind 
overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, 
nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic af- 
flictions, nor political disappointments, nor 
abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power 
to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His 


122 STARS OF THE MORNING 


spirits do not seem to have been high, but they 
were singularly equable. His temper was seri- 
ous, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which 
no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. 
Such as it was when, on the eve of great events, 
he returned from his travels, in the prime of 
health and manly beauty, loaded with literary 
distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes, 
such it continued to be, when, after having ex- 
perienced every calamity which is incident to 
our nature, old, poor, sightless and disgraced, he 
retired to his hovel to die.” 

Yet not to die, for in spite of these conditions, 
he set to work to follow the inward light, and 
to write the poem which he had contemplated 
all his life. Collection of the material for the 
poem required much research. In this, he was 
aided by the willing service of a young man 
and by the unwilling service of his daughters. 
These latter he compelled to read long passages 
from Latin and Greek, which they could not un- 
derstand, so that it could not have been a very 
pleasant task for them. When it was suggested 
that he might teach them the language, he re- 
marked,— 


“One tongue is enough for a woman.” 


During this later period of his life, Milton wrote 
three poems, any one of which would have 
placed him among the great. 

The first of these, ““Paradise Lost,” appeared 


MILTON 123 


in 1667, when Milton was fifty-nine. The writ- 
ing of this poem took seven years. Its purpose 
is “‘to justify the ways of God to men.” 

A young man, a friend of Milton’s reading 
the manuscript, is said to have remarked to the 
author,—““Thou hast said much here of Para- 
dise Lost, but what hast thou said of Paradise 
Founde” 

Perhaps to this question we owe the second 
poem, “Paradise Regained,” which appeared in 
1670. The purpose of this poem is to set forth 
the victory of Jesus. 

The third poem is “Samson Agonistes,” which 
appeared in 1671. In this we find much of Mil- 
ton’s own feeling and experience in his portrayal 
of the blind Samson. Here he pictures the 
mighty Samson, fallen; yet faith in God en- 
dures,— 


“Just are the ways of God, 
And justifiable to men; 
Unless there be who think not God at all. 
If any be, they walk obscure; 
For of such doctrine never was there school, 
But the heart of a fool.” 


In that part of London called “Cripplegate” 
stands old St. Giles Church. In the little yard 
in the front of the Church, the body of John 
Milton who died November toth, 1674, in his 
sixty-sixth year reposes. On the tombstone is a 
quotation from his own work— 


124. STARS OF THE MORNING 


“O spirit, what in me is dark, illumine! 
What is low, raise and support, 
That to the height of this great argument 
I may assert eternal Providence 
And justify the ways of God to men.” 


Why call John Milton the “Morning Star of 
Modern Statesmanship?” 

Undoubtedly he was greatest as a poet, yet he 
merged in remarkable degree poet, statesman, 
patriot. He was not what modern statesmen are, 
alas, but what best minds agree modern states- 
men should be; men who act upon high princi- 
ple, rather than self-interest. He was a “Morn- 
ing Star,” in that he acted upon unselfish prin- 
ciple and advocated such in leaders, in a day 
when ability made right. A king who could, 
or a priest who had power, might with impunity 
wrest all liberty from the less fortunate. “Might 
made right.” 

To such an age he brought the power of his 
mighty intellect, the wealth of his broad learn- 
ing and the eloquence of his “organ-voice.”’ 

His prose pamphlets are majestic and thun- 
derous in their diction. Every pamphlet struck 
a blow for liberty. He knew no master save 
Christ. “Fearless of men; fearful of God,” 
might truly be said of John Milton. In this 
sense he was the pioneer of a new type of states- 
menship, later exemplified in such men as Glad- 
stone and Lincoln. He entered into the lists of 
his country. 


MILTON 125 
“As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.” 


Fis attacks were made against deep-seated 
error and the servile worship of evil through 
eminent men. Macaulay says of him, “He never 
came up in the rear, when the outworks had 
been carried and the breach entered. He 
pressed into the forlorn hope.” So he was the 
Star of Morning, when the star was shining al- 
most alone. 

Behold him, poet of the eternal! Statesman 
who brought eternity to bear upon the affairs of 
time! He stands undimmed by the years be- 
tween. Slight of build, below middle height, 
light of hair, with eyes that were expressive even 
when unseeing, of great personal beauty, a stu- 
dent, a Christian gentleman, great even in calam- 
ity, as Giovanno Mauso says of him, 


“So perfect thou in mind, in form, and face, 
Thou’rt not of English, but angelic race,” 


he beckons us to give our best to our fellow- 
men,— 


“Mortals that would follow me, love virtue; 
She alone is free; 
She can teach ye how to climb 
Higher than the sphery chime; 
Or, if virtue feeble were, 
Heaven itself would stoop to her.” 


In the roll-call of those who have given them- 


126 STARS OF THE MORNING 


selves to noble statesmanship, who are among 
the 


‘Some there be that by due steps aspire 
To lay their just hands on the golden key, 
That opes the palace of eternity”; 


in addition to all his matchless contribution to 
the realms of literature, there shall ever stand 
among the first, the name of John Milton, as 
the Morning Star of the ideal for modern states- 
manship. 


THE MORNING STAR OF LIBERTY 
ROGER WILLIAMS 
ENGLAND-AMERICA\ 

(1607-1683) 


“Roger Williams was one of the most unique and pic- 
turesque persons in our early history.—He was the pioneer 
of religious liberty. His whole life throbbed with that prin-— 
ciple, upon which as a basis he was the first to establish a 
political community.—He was the apostle of the American 
system of a free Church in a free State.” 

Oscer S. Straus. 


“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the 
Lord of Hosts.”—Zechariah 4: 6. 


WILLIAMS 


THE year 1600 is a good date to remember. 
It was right in the middle of Shakespeare’s most 
productive literary period. In 1608 John Mil- 
ton was born in London. About this time Roger 
Williams was born. The date is variously 
placed from 1599 to 1607. What a time that 
was from 1600 on! Such men as these already 
mentioned and in addition Oliver Cromwell and 
Sir Henry Vane, English statesman, and George 
Fox, founder of the Society of Friends! Dur- 
ing these momentous years, the great struggle 
for modern freedom was on in earnest. The 
Pilgrims and the Baptists sought refuge in Hol- 
land and then in America. Charles I was de- 
throned and beheaded. John Milton heralded 
the cause of voluntaryism in England, and 
Roger Williams espoused the same cause with 
greater abandon in America as well as in Eng- 
land. 

The exact place and date of Roger Williams’ 
birth is not known, though preponderating evi- 
dence would seem to point to London as the 
place, and about 1607 as the date. Nothing is 
definitely known of his parentage. When Wil- 
liams was about fourteen years of age, he was 
seen in the Star Chamber at London, taking 


down speeches in shorthand. ‘This attracted the 
129 


130 STARS OF THE MORNING 


attention of Sir Edward Coke, who became in- 
terested in him, and sent him to Sutton’s Hos- 
pital School and then to Pembroke College, 
Cambridge. He graduated from college about 
1627 and at the desire of his benefactor, Sir 
Edward Coke, he began the study of law. He 
soon turned from law to theology however and 
became a decided non-conformist. 

We find him in December, 1630, setting sail 
for America. Of that experience he wrote years 
later to the daughter of Sir Edward Coke. 
‘Truly it was as bitter as death to me, when 
Bishop Laud pursued me out of this land, and 
my conscience was persuaded against the na- 
tional church and ceremonies and bishops be- 
yond the conscience of your dear father. I say 
it was as bitter as death to me, when I rode 
Windsor way to take ship at Bristol, and saw 
Stoke House, where the blessed man was, and 
I then durst not acquaint him with my con- 
science and my flight.” 

It was at great sacrifice, not only of feeling 
but of position and possible wealth and ease, 
that Williams left England, for he was already 
recognized as a scholar knowing Latin, Greek, 
Hebrew, Dutch and French, and having other 
qualities which might easily have made him a 
leader in his own land, had it not been for his 
disturbing conscience. 

So, with his wife, he set sail on the ship Lyons 
from Bristol December Ist, 1630, and in that 
little boat weathered the winter seas for sixty- 


WILLIAMS 131 


five days, landing at Nantasket, February sth, 
1631. 

He was received with welcome in Boston as 
a godly man and was immediately offered the 
temporary pastorate of the Church there in 
place of Rev. John Wilson who was returning 
to England on the Lyons. Again, Roger’s con- 
science interfered with his comfort, for though 
the Puritans had come to New England to get 
away from Archbishop Laud and the established 
church, they had never officially separated from 
the church. Roger Williams’ conscience would 
not permit him to accept this flattering offer 
to the pastorate, unless the church would de- 
clare itself separated from the Established 
Church of England. Another and a stronger 
reason for Williams not accepting this position, 
was that the Puritan Church held exactly the 
same belief that the Established Church held, 
namely that the civil authorities had the right 
to punish for spiritual differences. It seems 
strange to us that these men who came to Amer- 
ica to escape persecutions should in turn be- 
come persecutors, in many instances “out-Her- 
oding Herod” in the bitterness of their heresy 
hunting. Here was a practice to which Roger 
Williams could not subscribe. 

Right here it may be well to state that the 
Puritans were non-separatists from the English 
Church, while the Pilgrims had declared sep- 
aration from the Established Church. The 
Puritans settled on the Bay and were called Bay 


132 STARS OF THE MORNING 


Colonies, while the Pilgrim influence was pow- 
erful in Salem and Plymouth. This explains 
why these latter churches acted with more tol- 
erance than the Bay Colonies. 

Roger Williams’ refusal to accept the pas- 
torate of the Boston church immediately 
brought his views into prominence, and _ al- 
though he had been received as a godly, learned 
man, he was now frowned upon by the ominous 
heads of state and church. In April of the 
same year we find him assisting Mr. Skelton at 
the Salem church. Immediately Boston sent a 
warning to the Salem church against receiving 
Williams as teacher there, and Williams goes on 
to the more completely separatist colony at 
Plymouth. Here he was cordially received and 
continued teaching for two years. During this 
time Williams worked with his own hands to 
support himself and wife, and also found time 
to mingle with the Indians, learning their lan- 
guage and cultivating their friendship. “My 
soul’s desire was to do the natives good,” he 
writes, and this attitude he maintained through- 
out his life. This knowledge of the Indians and 
their friendship saved the colonies more than 
once. ‘‘God was pleased to give me a painful 
patient spirit to lodge with them in their filthy 
smoky holes to gain their tongue,” he says. So 
we see him living contentedly as pastor, mis- 
sionary, workman and father, for a daughter 
was born to his wife during this stay at 
Plymouth. 


WILLIAMS 133 


In August, 1633, Williams again goes to 
Salem to assist Mr. Skelton whose health was 
failing. A year later on the death of Mr. Skel- 
ton, Williams was offered the pastorate. The 
Boston church objected, but was overruled and 
in 1634 he became Pastor of the Salem Church. 
This aroused a more vigorous opposition, which 
resulted finally in the banishment of Williams. 
The decree was passed October 19th, 1635, to 
take place within six weeks. The Salem Church 
was forced to accept the decree by threats 
against their grants of property. Owing to ill- 
ness, Williams was to be permitted to remain 
in Salem until Spring, but so many people went 
to see him in his home, that lest they should 
further embrace his teachings, the court sud- 
denly decided to send him back to England. 
When they came to the house to apprehend him, 
they found his wife and children, but he had 
gone. Out in a New England winter, some- 
times by land and sometimes in an open boat at 
sea, “he steered his course from Salem and 
home”; befriended by Indians, he finally reached 
Narragansett Bay. Here he purchased land 
from the Indians. Of this experience he writes; 
—‘‘and surely between those, my friends of the 
Bay and Plymouth, I was sorely tossed, for one 
fourteen weeks, in a bitter winter season, not 
knowing what bread or bed did mean, beside 
the yearly loss of no small matter in my trading 
with the English and the natives, being debarred 
from Boston, the chief mart and port of New 


134. STARS OF THE MORNING 


England. God knows that many thousand 
pounds cannot repay the losses I have sustained. 
It lies upon Massachusetts and me, yea, and 
other colonies joining with them, to examine 
with fear and trembling, before the eyes of flam- 
ing fire, the true cause of all my sorrows and 
suffering.” And what was the true cause of 
Williams’ exile? » Not anything in Williams’ 
moral character, but simply and solely on the 
matter of freedom of conscience in spiritual 
things. It had not even dawned upon the minds 
of the Puritans of New England that they 
should grant religious liberty to others. Church 
and State were inseparably united. To be put 
out of church was to be excluded from citizen- 
ship. 

Roger Williams was a complete out-and-out 
advocate for freedom of conscience. His clear 
distinction between liberty and anarchy is por- 
trayed in his simile of passengers on shipboard. 
It presents so clearly his position on the extent 
and the /imits of freedom that I quote at 
length :—“There goes many a ship to sea, with 
many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal 
and woe is common; and is a true picture of a 
commonwealth, or an human combination, or 
society. It hath fallen out sometimes that both 
Papists and Protestants, Jews and ‘Turks, may 
be embarked in one ship. Upon which supposal 
I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that 
ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges: 
that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or 


WILLIAMS 135 


Turks be forced to come to the ship’s prayers or 
worship; nor compelled from their own par- 
ticular prayers or worship, if they practice any. 
I further add that I never denied that notwith- 
standing this liberty the commander of this ship 
ought to command the ship’s course; yea, and 
also command that justice, peace, and sobriety 
be kept and practiced, both among the seamen 
and all the passengers. If any of the seamen 
refuse to perform their service, or passengers 
to pay their freight; if any refuse to help in 
person or purse toward the common charges or 
defense; if any refuse to obey the common laws 
and orders of the ship, concerning their com- 
mon peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny 
and rise up against their commanders and of- 
ficers; if any should preach or write that there 
ought to be no commanders nor officers because 
all are equal in Christ, therefore no masters nor 
officers, no laws nor orders, no corrections nor 
punishments—I say: I never denied but in such 
cases, whatever is pretended, the commanders 
or commander may judge, resist, compel and 
punish such transgressors, according to their de- 
serts and merits.” 

What a man says he believes, and what he 
actually does when opportunity is presented, are 
often quite different things, as is illustrated in 
the case of the Puritans who advocated liberty 
in England because they were the persecuted ; 
but practiced oppression in New England be- 
cause they were the persecutors. 


136 STARS OF THE MORNING 


The absolute sincerity of Williams is shown 
in that having purchased land outside the juris- 
diction of the Bay Colony, he invites the op- 
pressed. “I desired it might be for a shelter for 
persons distressed for conscience. I, then con- 
sidering the condition of divers of my distressed 
countrymen, communicated my said purchase 
to my loving friends, who then desired to take 
shelter with me.” 

His wife and two small children join him 
and he calls the place Providence “‘in a sense of 
God’s merciful providence unto me in my dis- 
tress.” Thus was established in actuality, for 
the first time, a Christian state based upon the 
absolute freedom of conscience of every indi- 
vidual in spiritual things, submitting to civil 
authority, “only in civil things.” 

This policy drew the oppressed from England 
and other colonies of New England. Among 
them came the Anabaptists. These were espe- 
cially attractive to Williams because of their 
doctrine of soul liberty. His study of Scrip- 
ture convinced him they were right also in the 
matter of immersion as baptism. Williams was 
baptized by Holliman, and Williams then bap- 
tized Holliman and eleven others. This was 
probably the first Baptist Church in America. 
The year 1638. 

This sketch would not permit to tell of the 
two trips to England Williams made on behalf 
of the colony, largely at his own expense; one 


WILLIAMS 137 


in 1643 to secure a charter for the colony, and 
the other in 1651 to protect his colony and those 
nearby, Portsmouth and Newport, from the Bay 
Colonies’ encroachments. 

It is interesting to imagine his conversations 
with the great John Milton whom he must have 
influenced with his fiery, yet persistent fight for 
liberty, a matter dear to Milton’s own heart. 

Both of his visits to England were marked 
by his prominent service there for the cause of 
freedom, associated as he was with such men 
as Sir Henry Vane who entertained him while 
there, and Oliver Cromwell. 

Also, during these visits he wrote valuable ar- 
ticles on liberty, and a ‘“‘Key to the Indian Lan- 
guages.” On his return home he engaged in 
the affairs of state and to support his family, 
now consisting of his wife and six children, 
traded with the Indians. He steadfastly refused 
to place himself in any sense as dictator, al- 
though he was elected to various offices. He 
prided himself on the fact that “our charter ex- 
cels all in New England, or in the world, as to 
the souls of men.” 

During these closing years he kept up his 
friendly relations with the Indians and more 
than once saved the colonies, even the perse- 
cuting Bay Colonies, from the ravages of the 
red men. We have no record of the exact date 
of the death of Roger Williams, but it was prob- 
ably sometime in 1684. If we accept the date 


138 STARS OF THE MORNING 


1607 as that of his birth, he died in his seventy- 
seventh year. Not long before his death he 
writes: 

“And as to myself in endeavoring after your 
temporal and spiritual peace, I humbly desire 
to say, if I perish, I perish. It is but a shadow 
vanished, a bubble broke, a dream finished. 
Eternity will pay for all.” 


“T will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh- 
hen flies 
In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt 
the marsh and the skies.” 


He was buried “‘with all the solemnity the col- 
ony was able to show.” So runs the town record. 

Why call Roger Williams the Morning Star 
of Religious Liberty? ‘The world was in the 
darkness of bondage in Williams’ day. The 
“divine right of kings” made every man a slave 
to temporal power. ‘The doctrine of apostolic 
succession of the clergy made every man a 
spiritual slave. The union of church and state 
linked these two claims into a double servitude. 

Only the bravest dared to question either of 
these positions. Only the most learned and 
powerful could make their voices heard at all. 

The Renaissance opened the way to a better 
hearing by enlightening the mind and encour- 
aging the inquiring spirit. Then came Dante, 
Wycliffe, Huss, Savonarola, William the Silent, 
John Milton and other kindred spirits, all cham- 


WILLIAMS 139 


pions in their own way of the common people; 
each contributing his share to their enlighten- 
ment. 

Oscar Straus has aptly put it this way,— 
‘Luther lessened the tyranny of the Church 
by dividing it. Cromwell weakened the claims 
of absolute monarchy by overturning the throne 
of the British empire. Roger Williams re- 
claimed liberty of conscience by separating the 
functions of the Church and State.” 

Other men had talked about liberty, often 
meaning liberty only for themselves, like the 
New England Puritans, but here was a man 
who established a state on that principle and 
maintained it throughout. No more clearly is 
his stalwart adherence to principle shown than 
in Williams’ treatment of the Quakers. For 
some reason he especially disliked their doc- 
trines, and his most cutting things are said in 
controversy with them, yet he welcomed them 
to Providence, and to the full right to worship 
God according to their views. 

Liberty runs like the recurrent refrain in a 
symphony, throughout his entire life to the very 
end. Never were the words of a man more 
fully and completely lived than those of Roger 
Williams when he writes, 

“By the merciful assistance of the Most High, 
I have decided to labor in Europe, in America, 
with English, with Barbarians, yea, and also 
have I longed after some trading with the Jews 
themselves for whose hard measure, I fear the 


140 STARS OF THE MORNING 


natives and England hath yet a score to pay.” 

“T desire not that liberty to myself which I 
would not freely and impartially weigh out to 
all the consciences of the world besides. All 
these consciences ought freely and impartially 
to be permitted their respective worship, and 
what way of maintaining them, they freely 
choose.” This liberty he would extend to every- 
one impartially even to the Catholics; a thing 
exceedingly repugnant to the English of that 
day. 

No man ever before or since stated more 
clearly the issue and the dangers in the way of 
real liberty. He made no mistake of identify- 
ing license or lawlessness with liberty. He 
saw and stated the danger of people desiring 
liberty for self, but not for others. Can it be 
said more graphically than this? “After you 
have got over the black brook of some soul 
bondage yourselves, you tear not down the 
bridge after you, by leaving no small pittance 
for distressed souls, that may come after you.” 

No man ever more tersely put the value of 
separation of church and state than Roger Wil- 
liams in his plea to Parliament “that no person 
be forced to pray or pay, otherwise than as his 
soul believeth and consenteth.”’ 

We have no portrait of Roger Williams, no 
description as to his stature, or complexion; but 
who cares for these as we see him “stand un- 
shaken in the rockie strength of his convictions.” 

Oscar Straus quotes the unique place of Roger 


WILLIAMS 141 


Williams as presented by Professor Gervinus :— 

“Roger Williams founded in 1636 a small new 
society in Rhode Island, upon the principles of 
entire liberty of conscience, and the uncontrolled 
power of the majority in secular affairs. The 
theories of freedom in Church and State, taught 
in the schools of philosophy in Europe, were 
here brought into practice in the government of 
a small community. It was prophesied that the 
democratic attempts to obtain universal suffrage, 
a general elective franchise, annual parliaments, 
entire religious freedom, and the Miltonian 
right of schism would be of a short duration. 
But these institutions have not only maintained 
themselves here, but have spread over the whole 
union. ‘They have superseded the aristocratic 
commencements of Carolina and of New York, 
the high-church party in Virginia, the theocracy 
in Massachusetts and the monarchy throughout 
America; they have given laws to one quarter 
of the globe, and, dreaded for their moral in- 
fluence, they stand in the background of every 
democratic struggle in Europe.” 

When at last we have learned the lesson of 
religious freedom, and the day shall have come 
when we do not persecute nor despise another 
for differences of convictions, we shall look back 
and see that like the star of dawning in the shad- 
ows of the sky, there shines with a lustre that 
time shall but make clearer the freedom-loving 
soul of Roger Williams, the Morning Star of 
Liberty. 





MORNING STAR OF SPIRITUALITY 


JOHN WESLEY, 
ENGLAND 


(1703-1791) 


“Tt was Wesley who gave the impulse to Wilberforce, the 
emancipator, to Howard, the prison reformer, to Livingstone, 
the missionary, to the Booths with their work for the sub- 
merged classes. Above any other man in modern times he 
made it plain to the miner, the peasant, and the criminal, 
that they must achieve eminence through penitence and obe- 
dience, love and self-sacrificing service. Having turned mul- 
titudes to righteousness, his name now shines like the bright- 
ness of the firmament, and will continue to shine like the 
stars forever and ever.” 


Newell Dwight Hillis. 


“And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the 
firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the 
stars forever and ever.’”—Daniel 12: 3. 


WESLEY 


SUSANNA WESLEY, was a remarkable woman 
in more ways than one. For one thing she was 
the twenty-fifth child of her parents. She also 
was the mother of nineteen children. Notwith- 
standing she had time to see to their education, 
and to read sermons to the edification of her 
neighbors during the absence of her husband. 
We call John Wesley the “Founder of Meth- 
odism.”” Perhaps it might be better to call Su- 
sanna Wesley the “Mother of Methodism.” She 
was not a woman to be trifled with. She had 
decidedly a mind of her own, but that mind 
fortunately was governed by right principles. 
Her father was a gifted preacher, and she 
brought to her husband, the Rev. Samuel Wes- 
ley, a mind deeply religious and used to doing 
its own thinking. The fathers of both Samuel 
and Susanna were ministers who had dissented 
from the Established Church, but both Samuel 
and Susanna had dissented from the views of 
their parents back again into the Established 
Church. 

At the age of thirty-five, Samuel with his wife 
and four children undertook the pastoral care 
of the parish of Epworth in Lincolnshire, a 
poor, vulgar, illiterate little English town. 
Here at the rectory on June 28th, 1703, the son 
John was born. 

145 


146 STARS OF THE MORNING 


The mother had a fixed method with her 
children, 'as one can see would be necessary 
when doing a wholesale business in children, 
and when no public schools of easy access prof- 
fered aid in their training. When one of her 
children attained the age of five years, it was 
placed in a room with the alphabet, with the in- 
structions to learn it, and learn it they did. 
The next day, they started the first chapter of 
Genesis for a reading lesson. When John’s turn 
came, he had this experience. 

When John was six years old, some ruffians 
who did not like their preacher’s statement of — 
the truth, set the rectory on fire. With so many 
to look after, it was not surprising that John, 
who was sleeping in the garret, was overlooked. 
The house was well on its way to destruction 
when the people saw the little boy of six at the 
upper window with no other way of escape. A 
human ladder was formed and John was res- 
cued. Thereafter he looked upon himself as a 
“brand plucked from the burning,” and his 
mother interpreted his rescue as a reason for 
taking special care in his training. In her diary 
she writes after this event: 

“T do intend to be more particularly careful 
of the soul of this child that I may do my en- 
deavor to instil into his mind the principles of 
Thy true religion and virtue.” 

At nine John, with four other children, had 
the small-pox and the mother writes, “Jack has 
bore his disease bravely like a man, and indeed 


WESLEY 147 


like a Christian, without complaint; though he 
seemed angry at the small-pox when they were 
sore as we guessed by his looking sourly at them, 
for he never said anything.” 

In this atmosphere of obedience, Christian 
culture and industry, John grew to the age of 
eleven, when he was placed in the Charter 
House School in London. The habits he had 
formed at home soon marked him as an indus- 
trious and capable student. At sixteen he was 
studying Hebrew. At seventeen he entered 
Christ’s College, Oxford. In one of her letters 
to him, at this time, his mother gives him some 
excellent counsel, which he cherished through- 
out his life, ““Whatever weakens your reason, 
impairs the tenderness of your conscience, ob- 
scures your sense of God, or takes off your rel- 
ish for spiritual things,—in short, which in- 
creases the strength of your body over your 
mind,—that thing is sin to you, however inno- 
cent.” 

In his twenty-first year he read two books 
which greatly influenced him, Thomas a 
Kempis’ “Imitation of Christ” and Jeremy Tay- 
lor’s “Holy Living and Dying.” He gave him- 
self seriously to the decision as to his work in 
life. The outcome was that he was ordained a 
deacon in 1725. In March of the following 
year, 1726, he was elected Fellow of Lincoln 
College. This fellowship carried with it a small 
allowance and took him to a new college where 
he seems to have known no one. Wesley then 


148 STARS OF THE MORNING 


determined to make no new friends save “those 
who would help him on his way to Heaven.” 
He writes to his mother, with whom he always 
kept on closest terms of confidence, ‘Leisure 
and I have parted company.” He lays out for 
himself a rigid schedule of study and living, 
which he proceeded to follow. He was soon 
made lecturer in Greek and moderator of the 
class, a position of influence. 

In 1727, Wesley’s father asked him to assist 
him in his parish, and John consented. His 
duties took him to a dreary little village five 
miles from Epworth, called Wroote. A little 
over a year later he was called back again to 
Lincoln College. On his return he found his 
brother Charles and a couple of other young 
men banded together for the purpose of living 
a more strict and noble life. John joined them 
in this and they made for themselves a careful 
division of each day, assigning a time for study, 
devotion, visiting hospitals and prisons, ete. 
Some wag called them ‘‘Methodists,” and the 
name clung to the movement later started by 
John and Charles. The father’s health failing, 
John was urged to return to Epworth and con- 
duct the work there, but he demurred on the 
plea that there were too many souls to be respon- 
sible for,—a plea he must have looked back on 
in later years with some wonder, when he was 
caring for thousands. 

In the Summer of 1735, when Wesley was 
thirty-two years old, he met Gen. James Ogle- 


WESLEY 149 


thorpe, who invited him to go back to Georgia 
with him and take charge of the parish there 
and do some missionary work among the In- 
dians. ‘The plan appealed to Wesley as one 
which would give him better opportunity to 
save his soul. Before deciding he sought the ad- 
vice of his mother, who favored the plan, say- 
ing, “Had I twenty sons I would rejoice though 
all were so employed, and though I never saw 
them again.” He embarked in October of the 
same year accompanied by Charles. 

On the voyage to America, which lasted three 
months, there were twenty-six Moravians on 
board. Their teaching concerning regeneration, 
that a person may be born again, greatly inter- 
ested John. Their quiet -Godly living im- 
pressed him. Especially did one incident on the 
voyage crystallize his regard. A terrific storm 
raged and as darkness came on a huge wave 
washed over the vessel. It looked as though 
the end had come. ‘Terror reigned. ‘The 
Moravians, however, sang and quietly prayed, 
with no signs of fear. The storm abated, and 
the next day Wesley asked, “Were you not 
afraid?” “TI thank God, no,” came the answer. 
“But your women and children,—were they not 
afraide” “Our women and children are not 
afraid of death,” they answered. 

The chief value of his visit to Georgia was 
his meeting with the Moravians. He was too 
ritualistic for the settlers and demanded too 
great rigidity in living. He did practically 


150 STARS OF THE MORNING 


nothing in the way of evangelizing the Indians. 

After a stay of two years he sailed from 
Charleston, December, 1737, and reached Eng- 
land in February. He was depressed for sev- 
eral reasons. He had become engaged to a girl 
in Georgia, but on the advice of Moravian 
friends had given her up because she was not 
“sound minded” enough. Then, too, he began 
to doubt his own conversion. He says, “I who 
went to America to convert others was never 
converted myself.” His work with the Indians 
also had been a failure and his mission to Amer- 
ica in general could not be called a success. 

In this state of mind he sought out the 
Moravians in London. He met a young man 
whom Count Zinzendorf was sending as a mis- 
sionary to the Carolinas, one Peter Bohler. 
They went down to Oxford together and for 
several weeks were much in each other’s com- 
pany, while John Wesley listened to him tell of 
his religion. “Preach faith ’til you have it!” 
said Bohler, “and then, because you have it, 
you will preach faith!” It was worth those 
weeks for that sentence alone. 

Then comes an entry in his journal which 
marks the real beginning of his great work. It 
is the year 1738, the date in the journal May 
twenty-fourth. 

“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a 
society in Aldersgate Street, where one was 
reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the 
Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he 


WESLEY 151 


was describing the change which God works 
in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my 
heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in 
Christ, and Christ alone, for my salvation; and 
an assurance was given me that he had taken 
away my sins, even mine, and saved me from 
the law of sin and death.” Not every one can 
fix the date of his conversion so accurately, but 
no one can reasonably doubt the reality of this 
experience which started Wesley on his great 
work. This was in May, 1738. Wesley died in 
March, 1791, fifty-three years later. In all those 
years he labored, without a break, in the light of 
that experience of the reality of Christ’s pres- 
ence within his heart, first felt in the little 
Moravian meeting. 

The Summer following his conversion, feel- 
ing his indebtedness to the Moravians, he went 
by way of Amsterdam and Cologne to Marien- 
born where Count Zinzendorf was living with 
a little colony of Moravians. Thence he went 
to Herrnhut, their central colony, where he 
spent two weeks. On his return to England, he 
preached in such churches as gave him oppor- 
tunity, but his doctrine of regeneration through 
faith was not popular, and one by one the 
churches were closed to him. 

In 1742 we find him visiting his old home in 
Epworth. He attended the parish church in 
the morning and listened to a sermon against 
enthusiasm. That evening at six o’clock he 
stands on his father’s tomb and preaches on en- 


152 STARS OF THE MORNING 


thusiasm and continues doing this for seven suc- 
cessive evenings. 

So gradually Wesley, finding the churches 
closed to him, preached out-of-doors, and the 
common people heard him gladly. 

During those fifty years, this man, slight of 
stature, of less than middle height, never weigh- 
ing over a hundred and twenty pounds, seems 
to have been made of tough fibre, for he would 
preach at five o’clock in the morning; ride 
twenty or thirty miles and preach at noon; ride 
on and preach at night. For years he averaged 
fifty miles on horseback and three sermons a 
day. His audiences sometimes numbered above 
twenty thousand in the open air. His voice 
seemed to grow stronger with the increased de- 
mands. Besides he managed to write, and not 
only on religious themes either. A little book 
on common diseases and their cure which he 
wrote, proved so popular that it passed through 
several editions in the first year. 

He read much, and much of his reading was 
done on horseback. 

The large numbers converted, demanded pas- 
toral care, and the great number he couldn’t 
reach cried out for his gospel. This need was 
met by his training men to go out, as Wycliffe 
had sent out the Lollards four centuries before. 
The growth of the work demanded a central 
executive plant. This was found in an aban- 
doned foundry on City Road, London, where 
now the Chapel erected in 1778 stands just 


WESLEY 153 


across from Bunhill Cemetery, the resting place 
of his mother, Susanna Wesley. 

Those fifty years were years of fruitfulness, 
if ever fifty years brought fruit. Over five hun- 
dred preachers and one hundred and twenty 
thousand members witnessed to the gospel John 
Wesley preached before his death. Who shall 
estimate the number and the service of those 
that have been influenced by him through the 
intervening years! 

They were years of hard work and of sacri- 
fice, for Wesley loved those things which all 
men love and long for. Often he yearned for a 
home of his own, as he wearily rode the muddy 
or snowy roads. Many of the comforts that a 
man like him would value, he gave up for the 
sake of the gospel, for he was a man who loved 
bodily cleanliness as well as cleanness of soul. 
Careful, even fastidious about his person, he 
emanated cleanliness. When the crowds threw 
mud at him, he seems to have noticed more that 
it spotted his clothes, than that it hurt his per- 
son. 

His, too, was a sacrifice of home life. That 
he valued the domestic comforts is shown by his 
becoming engaged when forty-six years old to 
one Grace Murray, an attractive vivacious 
widow of twenty-six, and would have married 
her, had not his brother Charles, feeling she 
was not staid enough for one of John’s position, 
interfered and arranged her marriage to an- 
other. 


154. STARS OF THE MORNING 


Two years later John did marry, but it was 
“not a happy mating. So disappointed in love, 
he still went on his lonely way, faithfully serv- 
ing the Master. 

His sacrifice, too, included that of friendships. 
He was a genial man; a man apt in conversa- 
tion. He would have been called to-day, “a 
good mixer,” but who can keep up active friend- 
ship with a man who has just preached and is 
now riding twenty miles on horseback to an- 
other appointment? Any one who would at- 
tempt such friendliness would feel that he was 
like the Irishman’s flea, ‘‘always where he ain’t.” 
So while others joined the genial company of 
friends before the fireplace, he pursued his 
lonely life of work. 

His writings brought him a goodly sum of 
money, but this too, he put back into the lives 
of the common people, for he loved them, did 
this “Apostle of the Common People.” 

His journal tells us many things of the roads, 
and the robbers, and the heads of men, hung for 
various crimes, stuck up on spikes here and 
there along the lonely roads, and the travel of 
those days. Sometimes the coach is his convey- 
ance instead of the horse. On one of these oc- 
casions when riding in a coach, the motley 
crowd raided them. There were nine in the 
coach, “three on each side and three in the 
middle.” Wesley did not joke, but who can 
read this entry in his journal without a smile,— 
‘‘A mob closely attended us, throwing in at the 


WESLEY 155 


windows whatever came next to hand. But a 
large gentlewoman who sat in my lap, screened 
me, so that nothing came near me.” A sug- 
gestive use for a large gentlewoman! Yet even 
as we see the diminutive John Wesley buried 
beneath this “large gentlewoman” and smile, 
we think of the prodigious sacrifice and labor 
of this man through all those years. 

One by one his closest loved ones died; his 
mother, that wise counselor through all her life; 
his brother Charles, who was always very close 
to him; the wise old counselors of other days. 
Increasingly he must have felt these losses and 
yet he could say, “I count it as much a sin to 
worry as to swear.” He might have said with 
James Whitcomb Riley 


“T’ve said goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, 
And I’m a cheerful old man still.” 


Year after year he made his tours through Eng- 
land. He planned as usual his rounds in 1791. 
In February he preached in City Road Chapel. 
Then out into the country surrounding London 
this man of eighty-eight went preaching. On 
Friday, February 25th, he went to the room he 
reserved for himself in City Road, his only 
home. There the next week on a Tuesday, as 
loved followers stood around the bed, he sat up 
and in a loud voice said, “The best of all 1s, 
God is with us.’ That night he was heard to 
murmur again and again, “I'll praise. TU 


156 STARS OF THE MORNING 


praise.” At ten o’clock on Wednesday morn- 
ing, March second, 1791, John Wesley opened 
his eyes, looked upon his friends who stood 
about, and quietly said, “Farewell” and “he was 
not, for God took him.” 

His body lay in the Chapel, where thousands 
came to look into his face. For fear of the 
large throng that would come, the body was in- 
terred between five and six o’clock on the morn- 
ing of March ninth, being carried to the grave 
according to his request “by six poor men.” 
Even at that early hour, thousands attended the 
service and heard the minister read of the tak- 
ing “of our Father here departed.” 

On the tomb previously prepared by John 
Wesley back of the City Road Chapel is this 
inscription, 


‘This great light arose (by the singular provi- 
dence of God) to enlighten these nations.” 


In Westminster Abbey is a monument to John 
Wesley and his brother Charles in the form of 
a tablet. On the upper part are profiles of the 
two brothers, and underneath, the inscription,— 


“The best of allis, God is with us.” 


Below this is sculptured, a likeness of John 
Wesley in the act of preaching in the open, sur- 
rounded by his listeners. Under this the in- 
scription,— 


WESLEY 157 


“T look upon all the world as my parish.” 


John Wesley because of his message to the 
common people has taken his place among that 
constellation of morning stars which began to 
arise in the coming of the Renaissance, with 
such as Dante, Wycliffe, Huss and others. 

The years had obscured the spiritual sense. 
It was a vulgar and uncouth age. Even the best 
of men had not grasped the inner significance 
of Christianity. John Wesley in early life was 
a good man, but the joy of salvation was not his. 
He strove to walk the arduous road to Heaven 
on the paving of righteous works. He looked 
for the persons and the means that would help 
him on his way; but with his conversion, his 
viewpoint changed and he saw the joy of bring- 
ing others the light he had found. He had 
learned that we do not earn heaven by the good 
works we do, but that we do good works because 
we have become children of Heaven. 

Luther heralded a reform in doctrine; the 
Quakers a doctrine of “inner light,” but Wesley 
brought to a darkened age the glad tidings of 
an inner love, the assurance of God’s grace. 

His prayer was that he might have a soul full 
of God and his life was a prayer that others 
might have this too. 

George Eliot in Adam Bede has given us a 
good picture of John Wesley to hang in the gal- 
lery of our memory, in the words she puts on 
the lips of Dinah Morris,— 


158 STARS OF THE MORNING 


“T remember his face well; he was a very old 
man, and had very long white hair. His voice 
was very soft and beautiful, not like any voice 
I had ever heard before. I was a little girl, 
and scarcely knew anything, and this old man 
seemed to me a different sort of a man from 
anybody I had ever seen before, that I thought 
he had perhaps come down from the skies to 
preach to us, and I said, ‘Aunt, will he go back 
into the sky tonight, like the picture in the 
Bible?’ ” 

And indeed he had come down from the sky © 
to preach to us, and as surely has he gone back 
into the sky there to shine, the Morning Star 
of Modern Spirituality, until the day of spirit- 
ual light shall dawn. 


THE MORNING STAR OF MODERN 
MISSIONS 


WILLIAM CAREY 
ENGLAND-INDIA 


(1761-1834) 


Re 


“Columbus was the real discoverer of the new world, 
though not its first discoverer, and it is from his voyages 
that the settlement of this continent by Europeans is prop- 
erly dated. So, from the work of Carey, though he was not 
the first of modern missionaries, from the organization of 
the Baptist Missionary Society, though it was not the first 
missionary organization of modern times, dates a conception 
of the duty of Christians so greatly enlarged, an increase af 
missionary activity so vast, that as we may properly call 
Columbus the discoverer of America, we may with equal 
propriety call Carey the Father of Modern Missions.” 

Henry C. Vedder. 


“Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth 
the curtains of thine habitations; spare not, lengthen thy 
cords, and strengthen thy stakes.” —Isaiah 54: 2. 


CAREY 


COULD there be a better designation than the 
“heart of England” for that section of the Brit- 
ish Isles which fostered John’ Wycliffe, George 
Fox the founder of the Friends, John Bunyan, 
the writer of Pilgrim’s Progress, William 
Shakespeare, the universal poet, William 
Cowper, and many others of England’s greatest 
spiritual leaders? Not the least among these 
was William Carey, born in ‘“The Midlands” at 
Paulersbury, August 17, 1761. 

It was a very humble cottage in which Wil- 
liam was born, but withal not a bad place for a 
good start in life. He was the oldest of five 
children. His father was aweaver. His grand- 
mother, a devout and cultured woman, came to 
live in their home on the death of her husband, 
and her influence over William was especially 
uplifting. 

Very early in life Carey showed a thirst for 
knowledge and investigation. The boys nick- 
named him “Columbus.” While William was _ 
yet a small boy, the family moved to the house 
connected with the town school. Here he had 
a room of his own, which he proceeded to fill 
with insects and birds and bugs, that he might 
watch their progress. His sister gives us this 


picture of her renowned brother, “He never 
161 


162 STARS OF THE MORNING 


walked out, I think, when a boy, without ob- 
servation on the hedges as he passed; and when 
he took up a plant of any kind he always ob- 
served it with care. Though I was but a child 
I well remember his pursuits. He was gener- 
ally one of the most active in all the amusements 
and recreations that boys in general pursue. He 
was always beloved by the boys about his own 
Ager 

His uncle was a gardener and gave him the 
first lessons in botany, a study which he contin- 
ued throughout his entire life. 

Years after, looking back on this early period 
of his life, Carey tells us, “I chose to read books 
of science, voyages, etc., more than any others.” 

Though Carey had this love of knowledge, 
because his father was only a poor man, his 
prospects were not very bright. In that dull 
age the probability was that he might be a 
schoolmaster, or perhaps a day laborer, with the 
prospect of the poor-house in sickness or old 
age. 

His becoming a day laborer in the fields was 
prevented by an affection of the skin caused by 
exposure to the sun, which gave him great pain. 
This career closed to him, he was at the age of 
sixteen apprenticed to Clarke Nickols, a shoe- 
maker in the neighboring town of Hackleton. 

Carey pictures this master as a very good 
moral man and a strict churchman, though 
sometimes he drank rather freely; “but he was 
an inveterate enemy to lying, a vice to which I 


*> 


CAREY 163 


was awfully addicted.” He pictures himself at 
this time as a “hater of dissenters.” “I had, 
moreover,” he writes, ‘a share of pride suffi- 
cient for a thousand times my knowledge; I 
therefore always scorned to have the worst in 
an argument, and the last word was usually 
mine.” A fellow apprentice, a dissenter, used 
to try to convince Carey who had been brought 
up in the Established Church, of the need of a 
change of heart; that externals were not enough 
to make a man right with God. With phari- 
saic assurance, Carey would bluster forth his 
objections. “But,” he writes, “I was often con- 
vinced afterwards that although I had the last 
word, my antagonist had the better of the argu- 
ment.” ‘This caused an uneasiness which was 
intensified by an incident, that convinced him 
more fully of his need of a Saviour. It was the 
custom for apprentices to collect Christmas do- 
nations for themselves, from their master’s cus- 
tomers. An ironmonger gave Carey the choice 
of a shilling or a sixpence. Naturally Carey 
chose the shilling. With the donation he bought 
some purchases for himself and after making 
them, found that the shilling was a counterfeit, 
and that he had exceeded his supply of money. 
Fearing his master’s wrath he determined to 
contend that the brass shilling was his master’s. 
He also called God in to help. “I thereby 
promised that, if God would but get me clearly 
over this, or, in other words, help me through 
with the theft, I would certainly for the future 


164. STARS OF THE MORNING 


leave off all evil practices; but this theft and 
consequent lying appeared to me so necessary, 
that they could not be dispensed with.” He 
further tells us that a gracious God did not get 
him safely through. His lie was discovered and 
best of all his own weakness and sin were re- 
vealed to him. He began seeking peace, and at 
the age of eighteen there appeared to him the 
“Crucified One,” and the “hypocritical Phari- 
see was converted into the evangelical preacher.” 

The change was of course a gradual one. 
Help to young converts was not as accessible 
then as now, and Carey was thrown upon his 
own resources in finding his way, by reading 
the Bible for himself. One book, a little vol- 
ume, came into his hand about this time, which 
Carey ever after prized as one of the greatest 
influences in his life, “Help to Zion’s Travel- 
ers,’ by Robert Hall, the father of the more re- 
nowned Robert Hall. This good man took an 
interest in Carey and helped him toward being a 
Christian, and also gave him directions as to 
how to become a preacher. 

His study of Scripture led him to believe in 
immersion and Mr. Ryland a Baptist minister 
records, “On October 5th, 1783, I baptized in 
the River Nen, a poor journeyman shoemaker.” 
The text on that occasion could not have been 
more definitely true,—“‘Many first shall be last, 
and the last first.” 

Immediately after his conversion he began 
talking to others about Christ. His expositions 


CAREY 165 


of Scripture were so clear and his manner so 
persuasive that many people wanted him to “ex- 
ercise his gift” as a preacher. He began in a 
little “licensed house” at Pury, and in other 
places as opportunity afforded. He attended a 
meeting of the Baptist Association in Olney, 
where he met his life-long friend, Andrew Ful- 
ler. So Carey presents himself to us at this time 
as a cobbler and a preacher, and so poor that 
often he had not money to buy food. 

To add to the burdens of Carey, his master 
died, leaving him as a heritage his wife and 
family and a number of debts. Instead of try- 
ing to escape these, Carey shouldered the re- 
sponsibility, assumed his master’s debts, and 
over the doorway he placed his sign,—“Second 
Hand Shoes Bought and Sold.” At the age of 
twenty he married the sister of his master’s wife. 
It was a sad union with one never in sympathy 
with her husband’s high purpose, and who later 
developed insanity, of which she died some 
twenty years after in India. Yet during all 
those years Carey showed her loving care. 

Later, Carey was called to preach in Moulton, 
where he finally moved his shop, pegging shoes 
and peddling them from town to town during 
the week and preaching on Sunday. ‘The old 
church record of that district has this entry. 


“April 29th, 1787—Church Meeting. After 
the Order, our Brother William Carey was dis- 
missed to the Church of Christ at Moulton in 


166 STARS OF THE MORNING 


Northamtonshire with a view to his ordination 
there.” 


His salary at Moulton was fifteen pounds a 
year. This he augmented by teaching in the 
town school and his shoe trade. 

Truly it would seem “that no man in Eng- 
land had apparently a more wretched lot or 
more miserable prospects than he.” 

The row of six houses in one of which he 
lived, still remains. Poor little houses, one room 
on a floor. You can look right through the 
front window from the street to the court in the 
back. The street itself is dismal and narrow 
and perhaps there came then some village gos- 
sip, as came to pry into our affairs as we tried to 
picture the great missionary in that little room. 
But in spite of her, we can finally succeed in 
conjuring him up again. There he sits at his 
bench, near the window looking out on the gar- 
den, that he kept far better than it is to-day. 
On the wall before him is a large map of the 
world with pieces of paper pinned here and 
there, on which in his neat handwriting are facts 
of all sorts about the different countries, gleaned 
from his broad reading. 

On the bench and all around him are books 
and more books;—The Bible in Latin, Greek, 
Hebrew; books of all sorts. There he sits, a lit- 
tle man, completely bald, with a twinkle in his 
eyes. 

Is this where the great Carey lived, in this 


CAREY 167 


little roome Hardly! A man’s body may be 
in a very little room, but his spirit may be where 
he wills, and no man ever lived in a bigger 
world than Carey, in those days. 

What Carlyle said of George Fox might have 
been said with even greater truth of William 
Carey,—‘‘Sitting in his stall, working on tanned 
hides, amid pincers, paste-horn, rosin, swine 
bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this 
youth had nevertheless a Living Spirit belong- 
ing to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, 
through which, as through a window, it could 
look upwards and discern its celestial Home.” 
And it might be added,—he could look outward 
and behold all the peoples of the earth, and that 
“Living Spirit” yearned to go out and tell all 
of the “celestial Home.” 

This feeling he tried to communicate to his 
fellow ministers as occasion offered, but with 
apparently little success, as is shown in an inci- 
dent which occurred at the ministerial meeting 
held at Northampton in 1786. 

Old Mr. Ryland, who presided, asked the 
younger ministers if they would propose some 
question for discussion. Carey suggested that 
they consider, ‘““Whether the command given to 
the Apostles, to teach all nations, was not obliga- 
tory on all succeeding ministers to the end of the 
world, seeing that the accompanying promise 
was of equal extent.” 

The aged minister in a fury shouted his re- 
buke, which however, but expressed the com- 


168 STARS OF THE MORNING 


mon belief of that day, “You are a miserable 
enthusiast for asking such a question. Certainly 
nothing can be done before another Pentecost, 
when an effusion of miraculous gifts including 
the gift of tongues, will give effect to the com- 
mission of Christ as at first.” 

It must have been a humiliating experience 
to the young preacher, and a discouraging one, 
too, but if they would not /isten to him perhaps 
he could get people who would read his views. 
So he wrote a pamphlet entitled,—“‘An Inquiry 
into the Obligations of Christians to use Means 
for the Conversion of the Heathens, in which 
the Religious State of the Different Nations of 
the World, the Success of Former Undertak- 
ings, and the Practicability of Further Under- 
takings, are considered by William Carey.” A 
man by name of Thomas Potts, one of those less 
renowned but essential contributors to progress, 
gave Carey ten pounds to publish the tract 
which appeared in 1792. 

There was no man better qualified to write 
such a comprehensive tract, than Carey with his 
linguistic ability, his broad knowledge gained 
through years of interested study, and his keen 
enthusiasm. It has been called “the first and 
greatest missionary treatise in the English lan- 
guage.” 

The spirit of the man and his cherished in- 
centive may be seen in the closing words,—“It 
is true all the reward is of mere grace, but it 
is nevertheless encouraging; what a treasure, 


CAREY 169 


what a harvest must await such characters as 
Paul, and Eliot, and Brainerd, and others, who 
have given themselves wholly to the work of the 
Lord! What a heaven it will be to see the many 
myriads of poor heathen, of Britons among the 
rest, who by their labors have been brought to 
the knowledge of God! Surely a crown of re- 
joicing like this is worth aspiring to. Surely it 
is worth while to lay ourselves out with all our 
might, in promoting the cause and kingdom of 
Christ.” 

In 1789, Carey moved from Moulton to 
Leicester, where he preached on Sundays and 
taught school during the week from nine to 
four. In addition, he managed to study botany 
and other branches of learning, so that soon the 
whole town spoke with pride of the new Baptist 
minister, 

The ministers’ meeting of 1792 came round. 
The place was Nottingham, the day May arst. 
Carey was to preach the sermon. He chose as 
his text Isaiah 54:2-3. His outline was sim- 
ple:—two points, “Expect Great Things from 
God. Attempt Great Things for God!” 

It was a good sermon. ‘They were all satis- 
fied to dismiss the meeting and let it go at that. 
Carey seized Andrew Fuller’s arm and cried 
out,—‘‘Are you, after all, going to do nothing?” 

The meeting was called to order and a mo- 
tion passed that at the next quarterly meeting 
to be held in Kettering, plans be presented for 


170 STARS OF THE MORNING 


forming a society for the purpose of propa- 
gating the Gospel among the heathen. 

Today, if you will go, you will find still 
standing that fine old, gabled house surrounded 
by a charming English garden. In the brick 
wall in front you will see a tablet, telling the 
visitor that here on October 2nd, 1792, was or- 
ganized the first society for propagating the 
Gospel among the heathen. The house has been 
purchased by the Baptists and is maintained as 
a home for missionaries back on furlough. It 
is a benediction to stay there a few days, and to 
picture that momentous meeting. What men 
these were! The Secretary was Andrew Fuller. 
His body lies in the churchyard back of the 
Baptist Church in Kettering. The grave fell in 
a few years ago. The bones of the saint were 
carefully taken up until the place could be 
properly repaired. A present deacon of that 
fine old church over which Fuller was Pastor 
for so many years, said with awe, “I held the 
skull of Andrew Fuller in these hands of mine 
and placed it on that table.” 

His spirit seems still to hover over that great 
Baptist Church in Kettering. What a perpetual 
blessing a good man is! ‘You excel me in wis- 
dom, especially in seeing difficulties. I there- 
fore want to advise with you both, but to exe- 
cute without you,” said this indomitable 
preacher to Ryland and Sutcliff. 

- Then, there was William Carey, the spirit of 
this movement who said, “I will go down into 


CAREY 171 


the well of heathenism, but you must hold the 
ropes.” 

In that company, also, was Samuel Pearce, 
the minister of Birmingham, who went home 
from the meeting, gathered together his savings 
and sent seventy pounds toward the project, of- 
fering also himself. 

Archbishop Farrar, (eokine back upon that 
gathering, said in Westminster Abbey in March, 
1887, ‘““Those who in that day sneered that Eng- 
land had sent a cobbler to convert the world 
were the lineal descendants of those who sneered 
in Palestine two thousand years ago, ‘Is not this 
the carpenter?’ ”’ 

Charles Grant who had been in India for 
many years on Government duty wrote, “I had 
formed the design of a mission to Bengal: 
Providence reserved that honor for the Bap- 
tists.” 

George Smith, one of Carey’s biographers, 
says,—‘‘After all, the twelve village pastors in 
the back parlour of Kettering were the real suc- 
cessors of the twelve apostles in the upper room 
of Jerusalem.” 

On the 1oth of January, 1793, William Carey 
and a physician, Dr. John Thomas, who had 
been in India, were appointed as missionaries 
on a salary of from one hundred to one hundred 
and fifty pounds a year to support the two mis- 
sionaries, their wives and four children, until 
such time as they could support themselves. 

Carey’s mother was dead. His father was 


172 STARS OF THE MORNING 


eighty-five years old. His wife was not sympa- 
thetic to the project. The British East India 
Company did not welcome missionaries. Carey, 
like Jacob of old, might have said, “All these 
things are against me!’ Nevertheless at sunrise 
June 13th, 1793, Carey with his party boarded 
the Danish steamer Kron Princessa Marta 
bound to Serampore and on the eleventh of No- 
vember, after a five months’ voyage, landed in 
Calcutta. 

“T feel something of what Paul felt when he 
beheld Athens, and ‘his spirit was stirred within 
him’,” Carey writes home. “If the Gospel flour- 
ishes here, ‘the wilderness will in every respect 
become a fruitful field.’ ” 

They had landed in Bengal among a hun- 
dred million souls, worshipping three hundred 
and thirty million gods. No one knew better 
than Carey the herculean task before them, yet 
he could write home, “I feel myself happy in 
my present undertaking for, though I never felt 
the loss of social religion so much as now, yet a 
consciousness of having given up all for God is 
a support; and the work, with all its attendant 
inconveniences, is to me a rich reward.” And 
even then he bids those at home “‘keep their eyes 
towards Africa and Asia” for Christ. Was 
there ever such another man? 

What inspired brush can adequately paint 
those forty years in India! Only the barest out- 
lines can be drawn. Let your reverent imag- 
ination clothe these! 


CAREY 173 


For seven years Carey lived and worked in 
Calcutta. So bitter was the British East India 
Company against missionary effort that they 
were permitted to stay not as missionaries, but 
William Carey as an indigo planter, and Doctor 
Thomas as a physician. During these years he 
gathered materials for future use, learning the 
Bengali and Sanskrit languages. Writing to his 
loved friend Pearce, he said, “If I, like David, 
only am an instrument of gathering materials 
and another build the house, I trust my joy will 
not be the less.” During part of this time they 
were so straitened in circumstances that once he 
had to borrow sixteen pounds from a native at 
twelve per cent. interest. 

At length the restriction of his work became 
so great, that he moved to Serampore, about 
seven miles from Calcutta, where they could 
settle as missionaries. ‘They settled here Janu- 
ary tenth, 1800, and here for thirty-four years 
until his death, William Carey lived and 
worked. 

He purchased a house for about eight hun- 
dred pounds with the money he had made in 
the indigo business. About five acres of land 
adjoined the house, and this Carey converted 
into a botanical garden, which furnished him 
recreation and added to the scientific knowledge 
of the flora of India. 

He now settled down to that long life of va- 
ried attainments which seem almost impossible 
for one man. He was first of all an evangelist. 


174. STARS OF THE MORNING 


For seven years Carey had daily preached 
Christ in Calcutta without a convert. But on 
the last Sunday of the year 1800, he baptized 
Krishna Pal, thirty-five years old. This con- 
vert became a famous missionary and a noted 
Bengali hymn writer. Never through all the 
years did Carey allow anyone or anything to 
steal from him the joy of personal evangelism. 

He was a translator. He produced the Bible 
in Bengali. Finding no words in their lan- 
guage to express “love” and “repentance,” he 
had to make them. To make effective his 
translations he had to have them printed, so he 
set up a printing press in Serampore; a busi- 
ness still thriving there to this hour. Between 
1801 and 1822, thirty-six translations of the 
Scriptures were made, edited and printed by 
Carey at Serampore. 

He was a philanthropist. Seeing the needs 
of the people he devised means of supplying 
free medicine and medical aid, and established 
a medical college to further this work. 

He was a reformer. Horrified by the spec- 
tacle of a widow being burned alive, over the 
body of her dead husband, he started in mo- 
tion those measures that finally officially abol- 
ished that brutal practice from India. 

He was a scientist, producing in his garden 
fruits and vegetables native to England; experi- 
menting and crossing varieties until he inter- 
ested the government, and had shown them the 
way to make tea growing, cotton, etc., of com- 


CAREY 175 


mercial value and adding greatly to the food 
stuffs of India. Of his scientific contributions 
in the realm of botany and native inventions, 
time will not suffice to tell. 

He was a teacher. When Lord Wellesley 
founded Fort William College, at Calcutta in 
1801, Carey was the only man they could find 
capable of filling the chair of Bengali and 
Sanskrit. 

He was first, last and always a Christian and 
to him, to be a Christian was to be a missionary. 

His fine Christian spirit is evidenced time 
after time in the conduct of the ever growing 
mission and the coming in of new helpers, and 
when he was maligned by those jealous of his 
ever increasing favor and popularity. 

To him there was no greater honor than that 
of being Christ’s missionary. When his son 
Felix accepted a flattering offer as a govern- 
ment official, the father sorrowfully writes, 
“My son Felix has shriveled from a missionary 
to an ambassador.” 

Could there be a more beautiful picture than 
this which George Smith paints of the wide 
range of Carey’s work in those Serampore 
years? “Here was for nearly a whole genera- 
tion a sublime spectacle—the Northamptonshire 
shoemaker training the governing class of India 
in Sanskrit, Bengali, and Marathi all day, and 
translating the Ramayana and the Veda, and 
then when the sun went down, returning to the 
society of ‘the maimed, the halt, and the blind, 


176 STARS OF THE MORNING 


and many with the leprosy,’ to preach in sev- 
eral tongues the glad tidings of the Kingdom 
to the heathen of England as well as of India, 
and all with a loving tenderness and patient hu- 
mility learned in the childlike school of Him 
who said, ‘Wist ye not that I must be about my 
Father’s business?’ ” 

There were personal sadnesses, and losses and 
disappointments, yet as the years multiplied, the 
life of Carey seemed to grow brighter and more 
beautiful. As he passed his three-score years 
and ten, his step lost something of its alertness, 
and yet he labored on with unabated interest. 
More than thirty years after Carey’s death, Mr. 
Gogerly who visited Carey writes of his last 
visit to the missionary,— 

“At this time I paid him my last visit. He 
was seated near his desk in the study, dressed 
in his usual neat attire; his eyes were closed, 
and his hands clasped together. On his desk 
was the proof sheet of the last chapter of the 
New Testament, which he had revised a few 
days before. His appearance, as he sat there, 
with the few white locks which adorned his 
venerable brow, and his placid colourless face, 
filled me with a kind of awe; for he appeared 
as though listening to the Master’s summons, 
and as waiting to depart. I sat in his presence, 
for about half an hour, and not one word was 
uttered; for I feared to break that solemn si- 
lence, and call back to earth the soul that seemed 
almost in heaven. At last, however, I spoke; 


CAREY 177 


and well do I remember the identical words 
that passed between us, though more than thirty- 
six years have elapsed since then. I said, ‘My 
dear friend, you evidently are standing on the 
borders of the eternal world; do not think it 
wrong, then, if J ask, What are your feelings 
in the immediate prospect of death?’ The ques- 
tion roused him from his apparent stupor, and 
opening his languid eyes, he earnestly replied, 
‘As far as my personal salvation is concerned, 
I have not the shadow of a doubt; I know in 
Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that 
He is able to keep that which I have committed 
unto Him against that day; but when I think I 
am about to appear in the presence of a holy 
God, and remember all my sins and manifold 
imperfections—I tremble.’ He could say no 
more. The tears trickled down his cheeks, and 
after a while he relapsed into the same state of 
silence from which I had aroused him.” 

Dr. James Culross tells of Alexander Duff's 
last visit to Carey.—‘‘We spent some time talk- 
ing chiefly about Carey’s missionary life, till at 
length the dying man whispered, ‘Pray.’ Duff 
knelt down and prayed, and then said ‘Good- 
bye.’ As he passed from the room, he thought 
he heard a feeble voice pronouncing his name, 
and, turning, he found that he was recalled. 
He stepped back accordingly, and this is what 
he heard, spoken with gracious solemnity: ‘Mr. 
Duff, you have been speaking about Dr. Carey, 
—Dr. Carey. When I am gone, say nothing 


178 STARS OF THE MORNING 


about Dr. Carey—speak about Dr. Carey’s 
Saviour.’ ” 

It was Monday morning June gth, 1834, at 
half after five, as the sun was rising, that Carey’s 
soul at last found the day in the presence of 
Him Whom years before his soul had seen 
through the shadows and toward Whom he had 
unerringly kept his eyes during all the years be- 
tween. 

The next morning as they carried his body 
to the Christian burying ground, though it 
poured rain, the Danish Governor, his wife and 
members of the council were there to do him 
reverence, and the flag floated at half mast. 
The road was lined with the poor, Hindus, 
Mohammedans, Christians, who had received 
bounty at his hand; and their tears mingled 
with the rain. 

On the little plain stone that marks his grave 
is “this inscription and nothing more” accord- 
ing to his direction,— 


“William Carey, born August 17th, 1761 
died June gth, 1834. 
‘A wretched, poor, and helpless worm, 
On Thy kind arms I fall.” 


Why call him the Morning Star of Modern 
Missions? Had not other missionaries gone 
out before him to tell the story to non-Christian 
people? He was preceded by Ziegenbalg the 
Dane who more than half a century before had 


CAREY 179 


gone as missionary to the Tamils; by Schwartz, 
the Prussian, who succeeded Ziegenbalg; by the 
Moravian missionaries to the Negroes of St. 
Thomas and to other peoples. Then why call 
him the morning star of Modern Missions? 
Because all of these, though devoted, yet re- 
mained as little stars in the dark firmament, that 
but made more apparent the darkness, while 
Carey somehow so stimulated missionary inter- 
est that he ushered in a new day of obedience 
to Jesus’ command to “Go!” 

His courage and enthusiasm and example 
shamed other Christian bodies into action. The 
old hard shell of hyper-Calvinism, that stifled 
missionary effort, was broken. It was in 1793 
that he succeeded in having a missionary society 
organized. Note the rapid succession of organi- 
zations among other Christian bodies! In 1797 
four years later, the Religious Tract Society; 
seven years after this in 1804, the British and 
Foreign Bible Society. Shortly after, the 
American Societies were formed, and within 
twenty-five years every denomination was look- 
ing out toward the evangelization of the world. 
A new day had dawned. 

In respect to his method, he may also justly 
be called the Morning Star of Modern Mis- 
sions. He introduced in his mission every form 
ef modern methods,—evangelistic, educational, 
medical, industrial, social. The historian of 
missions will tell you, he was first: 

“The first complete or partial translation of 


180 STARS OF THE MORNING 


the Bible printed in forty languages or dialects 
of India, China, Central Asia, and other neigh- 
boring lands, at a cost of eighty thousand, one 
hundred and forty-three pounds; the first prose 
work and vernacular newspaper in Bengali, the 
language of seventy million human beings; the 
first printing press on an organized scale, paper- 
mill, and steam-engine seen in India; the firsi 
Christian primary school in North India; the 
first efforts to educate native girls and women; 
the first college to train native ministers and 
Christianize native Hindus; the first Hindu 
Protestant convert; the first medical mission, of 
which that convert was, to some extent, the 
fruit; the establishment and maintenance of at 
least thirty separate large mission stations; the 
first botanic garden and society for the im- 
provement of agriculture and horticulture in 
India; the first translation into English of the 
great Sanskrit epics.” 

By him were introduced those methods now 
recognized as a part of every well organized 
mission station. 

In point of view of results he was a herald of 
a new day. Almost alone, he stood in that day, 
among the millions of heathenism. Within 
fifty years of his death the Protestant native 
churches of India numbered a_ half-million 
souls. T’o-day, thousands of missionaries are 
telling the story to non-Christian peoples, and 
millions have learned to look up to God and 
call Him “Father.” 


CAREY 181 


When at last the “Sun of Righteousness shall 
rise with Healing in His wings” upon all the 
kingdoms of the earth, there shall be seen still 
visible in the brightness of that new day, the 
morning star of modern missions, William 
Carey. Then shall we hear his refrain set to 


heavenly music, “Speak of William Carey’s 
Saviour.” 





THE UNSUNG STARS 


“And these all, having had witness borne to them through 
their faith, received not the promise, God having provided 
some better thing for us, that apart from us they should not 
be made perfect. ‘Therefore let us also, seeing we are com- 
passed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside 
every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and 
Jet us run with patience the race that is set before us.”— 
Hebrews XI: 39-12: 1. 


UNSUNG STARS OF THE 
MORNING 


CAMILLE FLAMMARION, for many years Pres- 
ident of the French Astronomical Society, tells 
us in his picturesque way that there are nine- 
teen stars of first magnitude, fifty-two of second 
magnitude, one hundred and eighty of third, 
five hundred and forty of the fourth and that 
some seven thousand stars of lesser magnitudes 
are discernible to the naked eye. An opera 
glass would disclose about thirteen thousand; a 
small telescope one hundred thousand, and that 
up to the fourteenth magnitude there must be 
about forty-four million stars. Many of these 
stars, he tells us, are flaming suns some of which 
are far larger than our sun. 

But the sun and moon appear to us to be the 
greatest of the heavenly bodies. 

It requires a distinct act of faith on our part 
to believe that the sun and moon are not the 
greatest. It is with persons as with heavenly 
bodies. ‘There are some who are outstanding. 
So they appear greater than others, but, because 
they appear greater, does not make them so. 
Conspicuousness is not greatness. Too long 
have we exalted the conspicuous leaders in peace 


and war, while the quality of greatness has been 
185 


186 STARS OF THE MORNING 


too often overlooked. The fact that the sun 
looks larger than some far-off fixed star, does 
not make it so; nor does fame make a man really 
greater than his unknown but fine spirited fel- 
low. 

At Stoke Poges just outside of London, there 
is a little church surrounded by a graveyard. A 
great overhanging yew tree shades a tomb table- 
high of marble, now much worn by the ele- 
ments. Here one day Thomas Gray sat and 
looking about over the graves, mused on those 
whose bodies lay there, 


“Some village Hampden, that with dauntless 
breast 
The little tyrant of his fields withstood; 
Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest, 
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s 
blood. 


Full many a gem of purest ray serene 

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; 
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen 
And waste its fragrance on the desert air.” 


In that little city of the dead were those whose 
hearts had beat nobly with love of liberty, had 
aspired to high thinking, had fought bravely on 
little battlefields, and though the achievement 
of conspicuous greatness was never theirs, the 
quality of real greatness rested within them. 

The area before the temple is crowded with 
merchants, the rich, the renowned from many 


UNSUNG STARS OF THE MORNING 187 


lands. The great brazen jars resound to the 
clinking of gold and silver as these great of 
earth cast of their abundance into the temple 
treasury and pass on in self-satisfied com- 
placency. In marked contrast to their grandeur, 
yet with exquisite grace and tenderness, a poor 
widow, bent with years and hard work, dropped 
two mites into the great jar and passed on to the 
reverent worship of the God she loved. A 
discerning eye saw her, and Jesus turning to his 
disciples said, “‘See that woman with the faded 
shawl and bowed form!” ‘The disciples could 
hardly make her out amid that resplendent 
throng. “She has given more than all these 
others, because she has given of her very life.” 

All of which leads us to the question as to 
what is greatness anyway? We have been talk- 
ing about outstanding men, leaders in the jour- 
ney of man upward. If greatness is measured 
as the Master said, by service, then these men 
were truly great. If greatness is quality of soul, 
then these men were great. Look at them, any 
one of them, Dante, Savonarola, Wesley! 

But it is not given to many to rise above his 
fellows as these men did. Then must the ma- 
jority of men forever give up the idea of being 
great? Is greatness possible only to a few? 

David Grayson describes greatness by telling 
of Carlstrom. Carlstrom had come from 
Sweden and had set up a shop where he mended 
anything in metal and took pride in mending it 
right. The more hopeless the job, the more sure 


188 STARS OF THE MORNING 


he was to mend it exactly right. Not money 
but workmanship was the object of Carlstrom’s 
labor. For forty years he had risen early and 
worked late. He had taken part in the simple 
activities of the town. He wasno recluse. He 
worked for the good of his community on elec- 
tion days and others. He was to be found 
washed up and shining in his place at Church 
on the Sabbath Day. 

Of him, Grayson says in his book on “Friend- 
ship,’ “he had beaten out the respect of the 
whole town and fashioned for himself wisdom, 
and peace of mind, and the ripe humour which 
sees that God is in His world.” ‘Then in his 
characteristically happy way, Grayson says— 
‘The more I think of it, the more I think that 
our gunsmith possesses many of the qualities of 
true greatness. He has the serenity, and the 
humour, and the humility of greatness. He has 
a real faith in God. He works; he accepts what 
comes. He thinks there is no more honorable 
calling than that of gunsmith, and that the town 
he lives in is the best of all towns, and the peo- 
ple he knows the best people. Yes, it zs great- 
ness.” 

Here is a message of inspiration to the hum- 
blest; any man or woman, boy or girl, no matter 
where he is, or what he does for a living, may ~ 
be great, for greatness is quality of soul, not 
praise of men. As the star which appears little 
to our view may actually be a blazing sun in 
the eyes of God, so the humblest person may 


UNSUNG STARS OF THE MORNING 189 


be great in the sight of Him who sees things 
as they are. 

Sometimes, long time reveals what nearness 
fails to show. Mozart died unheralded and 
was carried to a pauper’s grave; but the years 
have placed him on the pedestal of fame as the 
father of modern music. Is it not conceivable 
that this readjustment of judgment may reveal 
that many who now stand last, may really be 
first? As we look back on these characters, we 
find that their lives have been influenced by 
other lives in every instance. So while we love 
to sing of these bright stars of the morning, shall 
we not raise a hymn of praise to the unsung 
stars who helped to make effective their 
shining. 

Among the unsung great of earth are the good 
mothers. 

“T marvel at your patience,” said Samuel 
Wesley to his wife Susanna. “You have told 
that child the same thing twenty times.” “It re- 
quired that often to make what I told it ef- 
fective,” replied the mother of John Wesley. It 
was through her the illustrious son acquired the 
habits of industry and method, and that devotion 
to God which sent him forth to shine;—the 
morning star of spirituality in modern times. 
With her nineteen children and her household 
tasks she labored on, a real heroine. 


“Fle sang to the world, and she to her nest, 
In the nice ear of nature, which song is the 
best?” 


190 STARS OF THE MORNING 


And who shall say that the mother’s teaching 
in self-forgetful service, does not deserve much 
of the praise which is sung to the heroes of the 
world! 

John Milton’s father was a great lover of 
music and best of all he understood his son. 
When John came home from college, the father 
filled the house with the best of music and mu- 
sicians. Culture was the order of the home. 
How great a part, say you, had the father in 
making his renowned son the “great organ-voice 
of England.” 

And there is the old grandmother! What of 
greatness can she hope for, and yet Carey owed 
much, as many another man does, to the quiet, 
loving devotion of the aged grandmother whose 
rich experience has taught her that in quiet- 
ness and confidence in God is true strength. 

Who shall sing an adequate song to the wives 
of men! 

We speak of the great mission of Carey in 
Serampore, but he would tell us that much of 
the success of that mission was due to Hannah 
Marshman, who for forty-six years was not only 
the inspiration to her husband, but the very 
mother of that new enterprise. 

One day Nathaniel Hawthorne returned 
home. He was beaten. He had lost his posi- 
tion at the Custom House. He hated to face his 
wife, for he had failed. His wife met the de- 
jected husband with glad welcome. But there 
was no joy in his heart, for what could he do? 


UNSUNG STARS OF THE MORNING _ IQI 


—no work,no money. The far-seeing wife said, 
“T’m glad you have lost the position. Now you 
will have time to write your book!” “Yes, but 
how can we liver” Then she showed him some 
money she had saved from his small earnings 
and she urged him on. Is it any wonder that 
with such a wife he succeeded and there came 
from his pen one of the “best sellers,” The Scar- 
let Letter. To whom are we indebted for that 
book? ‘To Nathaniel Hawthorne or to his wife, 
or bother Many a man has succeeded and has 
been praised, whose success and praise belong 
in large measure to his wife. 

The home furnishes myriad examples of true 
greatness. Let us sing a song of praise to those 
who shine in the obscurity of the home. 

The teachey standing patiently before her 
class in some obscure schoolhouse; the preacher, 
ordained and unordained, with patient uncom- 
plaining love, encouraging, instructing, helping 
with unselfish hand; how these should share in 
the songs to greatness! 

One Sunday morning before the service in a 
little Scottish kirk, a layman told the faithful 
old preacher that there must be something 
wrong with the preaching for not a person had 
been added to the church that year. With what 
a heavy heart he preached that morning! At 
the close of the service, he sat there in the empty, 
silent church, longing for the end of the jour- 
ney as he saw the little church through a mist 
of tears. He did not notice the door opening, 


192 STARS OF THE MORNING 


and was startled when a hand was placed softly 
on his arm. It was a little boy standing there. 
“Do you think,” the lad asked him timidly, “do 
you think if I would study hard, I could be- 
come a preachere” “May God bless you my 
boy. Yes, I think you can become a preacher.” 
The years passed on, and to-day men sing the 
praises of Robert Moffatt the great pioneer mis- 
sionary in Southern Africa; but how about that 
faithful old preacher there in the country 
church, who started him on his way? 

It was an unknown monk, who in his sermon 
said something that went right to Savonarola’s 
heart, a something he treasured carefully all his 
life, which decided Savonarola to become a 
preacher. Who shall add to the hymn of the 
achievement of that great reformer a stanza of 
praise to the faithful old monk who put that 
treasure in Savonarola’s heart! Many of the un- 
known preachers, saddened by their apparent 
failure, will be astonished to find themselves 
standing one day among the great. 

It was a snowy New Year’s Day. Two men 
trudged bravely through the storm to church. 
By eleven o’clock about a dozen others had 
gathered. The minister was at a distance and 
had probably been storm-stayed. What should 
they do? Finally a rather poor looking man 
yielded to the urging of the people to go up to 
the pulpit and start the service. He was nerv- 
ous. He was no speaker. He looked over the 
church,—some three hundred empty seats, about 


UNSUNG STARS OF THE MORNING 193 


two dozen people whom he knew very well and 
one stranger, a boy of about fifteen years. 

A marble tablet now adorns the wall in the 
church near where the boy of fifteen sat that 
snowy morning. It tells that on that morning 
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was converted and 
gave his heart to Christ;—Charles Haddon 
Spurgeon the great preacher, whose ministry 
brought thousands into the Kingdom. Who 
will place a tablet to the man who took the min- 
ister’s place, and to that noble little band of 
Christians who braved the storm to go to church 
that morning and so made possible the service 
in which the renowned preacher was converted? 
When shall we learn to sing due praise to the 
obscure but loyal members of churches who are 
truly as great in heart as the most conspicuous 
leaders! 

In the datly walks of life there are heroes 
and heroines whose lives are set to divine music. 
There was the apprentice serving the same mas- 
ter to whom William Carey was apprenticed. 
In those days, Carey tells us, he had conceit for 
a thousand times his knowledge, and loved to 
have the last word in an argument. But the 
quiet confidence of this fellow-apprentice con- 
vinced Carey that here was a man who had 
something more valuable than argument, and 
through the influence of this brother workman 
William Carey came to know Jesus as his Sav- 
iour. What part, think you, has this youth in 
the missionary harvest of Carey? In the songs 


194. STARS OF THE MORNING 


we raise to the great evangelists of the world, 
let us not forget the man at the bench who 
quietly brings his fellow workman to Jesus! 

To-day we have the heart-searching plays of 
Shakespeare as a common heritage, but the plays 
were written only to entertain that generation, 
with no thought of permanent benefit to poster- 
ity. How did we come by them? Lowell tells 
us: “I doubt if posterity owes a greater debt 
to any two men living in 1623 than to the two 
obscure actors who in that year published the 
first folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays. But 
for them it is more than likely that such of his 
works as had remained unpublished would have 
been irrevocably lost; among them Julius Cesar, 
The Tempest, Macbeth. And they did it as 
they said, “To keep the memory of such a worthy 
friend and fellow alive as was our Shake- 
Snearewe, 

So to the obscure actors as well as to the 
dramatist we owe these plays. Do they not de- 
serve to have their praises sung? 

And who shall exalt the two men who at their 
own charges built the church where John Huss 
preached; of Robert Haldene who sold all that 
he had and gave thirty-five thousand pounds to 
send out missionaries, with Benares as a center, 
as Carey did from Muduabate; of Grosseteste 
the learned and pious Bishop of Lincoln, whom 
Wycliffe called ‘“SSamuel Robert the great head 
and heart of the church,” who helped pave the 
way for religious freedom; of the brave un- 


UNSUNG STARS OF THE MORNING 195 


named Anabaptists and Waldensians, who were 
reformers before the Reformation and without 
whom the Reformation could not have been ef- 
fective! 

It is with a thrill of joy and satisfaction we 
think of the recognition at last of the brave Wal- 
densians who suffered untold agonies for the 
sake of freedom. As the result of the edict of 
persecution issued by the Duke of Savoy in 
1686, Giovanni Luzzi tells us, eleven thousand 
of the fourteen thousand men, women and chil- 
dren perished miserably of hunger, fever, pes- 
tilence, in the darkness and damp of infected 
prisons. Then at last came the edict of tolera- 
tion by Charles ‘Albert, February 17th, 1848, 
after two centuries of agony. 

Here comes the procession to celebrate with 
thanksgiving the edict. It is in the Campo di 
Marte in Turin in those very streets where 
“Waldensian” was a name of opprobrium. 
“Where shall these Waldensians be placed in 
the parade?” was the question. “Let them be 
first. They have been last long enough!” comes 
the decision. There they march, six hundred of 
them, to the continual shouting, ‘Evviva! 
Long live our Waldensian brethren!” Luzzi 
tells us that ‘more than one young man broke 
through the ranks and threw himself upon the 
neck of these grave mountaineers, whose voices 
were so choked with emotion that they could 
only reply by tears of recognition.” 

And as we sing of these, let us not forget that 


196 STARS OF THE MORNING 


three hundred years before on March 2gth, 
1558, in that very square, Gioffredo Varaglia, 
Pastor of the Waldensian parish of San Gio- 
vanni, suffered martyrdom, saying as the execu- 
tioner was about to kill him, “Do your duty; 
my death will not be in vain.” 

We glided smoothly along over the summer 
sea on an ocean: palace. ‘There was the color- 
ful throng enjoying the bracing breezes and the 
soft poetry of the sky and sea. The officers in 
clean uniform and gold braid seemed monarchs 
of the waters. Then we went down, down, 
down into the dark bottom of the ship, and there 
were men stripped to the waist shoveling, end- 
lessly shoveling the black dirty coal into eager, 
blazing furnaces. Who will sing a song of those 
sweating, begrimed workmen buried beneath 
the splendor of the surface? Without these, the 
_ gay throngs above could not be; without these 
the ships cannot go down to sea; without these 
the men in braid would be helpless. 

When shall we learn to sing to the unsung 
stars! When shall we learn to live as heroes 
in obscure places, knowing that He who tells 
the stars, sees them a// as they are, not as they 
seem. He also makes no mistake about us. 

What a fine-appearing, enviable picture he 
made—that well dressed, clean looking youth 
who approached Jesus one day with the asser- 
tion and the question: “I have kept all these 
laws. What lack I yet?” 

Then did Jesus look through the man’s ex- 
terior, to his heart. He saw there a dependence 


UNSUNG STARS OF THE MORNING 197 


upon money and the things that money brings, 
and while others saw the glitter, Jesus saw the 
need. This man needed to know that true worth 
was in being, not in things. But the youth 
would not pay the price, for he went away very 
sorrowful. Then Jesus turned to His disciples 
and said, “Many that are first shall be last, and 
many that are last, first.’ Not all but many. 
Carey was renowned and he was also great. 
Some are renowned but not great. Some are 
great and are not renowned. Heaven shall sing 
the song of praise to real greatness, 


“And millions who, humble and nameless, 
The straight, hard pathway trod” 


with heroic uncomplaining loyalty, shall shine 
as the stars forever and ever, for ‘“‘God seeth not 
as man seeth, for man looketh on the outward 
appearance, but God looketh on the heart.” 
Mr. E. W. Lewis tells the story of a waking 
dream. In the dream he approaches a build- 
ing whose dome seemed to penetrate the heav- 
ens. A gracious guide conducts him through 
the building which consists of various spacious 
galleries, all opening on a great nave. The 
doorway to the first gallery bore the inscrip- 
tion —‘“ Heroes of Battle’, the second,—“Heroes 
of the Lonely Way’; the third —“Heroes of 
Truth’, the fourth—“Heroes of Love.” In 
each of these were monuments and inscriptions 
to the great of earth in various realms. As he 
entered the last it seemed that the great dome 


198 STARS OF THE MORNING 


merged with the shining blue above. Faces ap- 
peared one by one, like stars in the twilight 
firmament,—one after another, as the appearing 
of the stars at evening, he could distinguish 
them, explorers, missionaries, returmers. ‘Then 
brighter than the shining sun, in the zenith ap- 
peared a cross and the loveliest face of all. A 
hushed name breathed from the beholder’s lips, 
—“Jesus.’ Then came soft strains of music like 
the tones of an organ. Louder the music grew, 
and clearer, until words could be distinguished 
at last: 


“In the cross of Christ I glory, 
Towering o’er the wrecks of time. 
All the light of sacred story 
Gathers round His head sublime.” 


Awed and hushed, the visitor retraced his 
steps to the entrance. There stood his guide. 


“You will be here some day?” he asked. 

“Mer” I stammered out; “me a heror” 

“Why note” he softly asked. “Why not? 
You have it in you.’ 

“And as the guide reached out his hand, lo 
the print of the nail was there!” 


We have talked of heroes and heroism. We 
have traced the achievements of these pioneers 


UNSUNG STARS OF THE MORNING 199 


in the journey upward. Our present blessings 
have their roots in their sacrifices. But let us 
not forget that thousands unknown to posterity 
have added their share, as the unknown builders 
of the pyramids dragged the stones across the 
desert and died, but left the pyramids as the 
monument to their labor. These too, are great. 
Also, let us remember that we, even the hum- 
blest of us, may with true heroism take our place 
in the dark firmament of sin and wrong and 
suffering and add the light of our shining until 
the day of truth and right dawn, and the dark- 
ness flee away! 


“Oh, may I join the choir invisible 

Of those immortal dead who live again 

In minds made better by their presence; live 

In pulses stirred to generosity, 

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

For miserable aims that end with self, 

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night lke 
stars, 

And with their mild persistence urge men’s 
search 

To vaster issues. So to live is heaven: 

To make undying music in the world, 

Breathing a beauteous order that controls 

With growing sway the growing life of man. 


This is life to come,— 
Which martyred men have made more glo- 
rious 


200 STARS OF THE MORNING 


For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
That purest heaven,—be to other -souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, 

Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion ever more intense! 

So shall I join the choir invisible 

Whose music is the gladness of the world.” 


“GOD HAVING PROVIDED SOME BETTER 
THING FOR US, 
THAT APART FROM US THEY SHOULD NOT 


BE MADE PERFECT.” 





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